


Echoes

by vakarian_shepard



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 36,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vakarian_shepard/pseuds/vakarian_shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick Valentine the man knew the Sole Survivor well before the war--very well. Nick Valentine the synth doesn't know how to handle some of these new flashes, especially considering he can't actually tell if they really happened.</p><p>The Sole Survivor loved her friend before the war, and she loves her new friend with her old friend's name just as much, maybe more. (Okay, maybe definitely more.)</p><p>One thing's for certain: if they really want to solve this new, strange case, they're going to have to at least try and set aside their mutual pining for a little while and actually focus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flashes in the Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> apologies for the summary it really fought me

Of all the bad ideas he and Kira had ever come up with, he was pretty sure this was one of the worst.

They’d spent the night in a lot of sketchy locations—in the middle of the Wastelands, a parking garage, under collapsed bridges, that one sleazy motel at Bunker Hill—but this was by far the sketchiest. He had insisted that they at least try and make it to Goodneighbor, but they’d been travelling without a real break for almost three days and she was exhausted. She never wanted to stop unless she really needed it, and the way she was beginning to lean on him for support, eyes drooping, was enough to convince him that they needed to figure out a solution sooner rather than later.

Still, he wondered if maybe there was a better solution than spending the night in an abandoned, still mostly in tact car in the middle of the ruins.

She explained her train of thought well enough to convince him—basically, if they laid low and didn’t move around a lot, they would just look like a couple of dead bodies to anyone passing through. That, or no one would even notice because, honestly, who looks for people camping out in broken cars?

He felt bad, dragging her around like this. He appreciated the help, needed it sometimes, but he knew when he got going that he tended to keep going until the job was finished. She’d actually insisted that they go straight to Goodneighbor for this job, even though he had offered to go this one alone and let her rest. She said it sounded urgent, waving him off with a quip about how she would have plenty of time to sleep when she was dead.

That didn’t quite change the fact that she _needed_ to sleep, however.

It was lucky _he_ didn’t need to sleep, he mused as he settled a little deeper into the passenger seat. He half figured that that little fact was most of the reason she wanted him to travel with her so much, no matter how much she insisted that she just enjoyed his company. That’s not to say that he _didn’t_ enjoy her company, no, in fact he enjoyed her company way too _much_.

He wasn’t sure she recognized him, and he hadn’t _really_ recognized her when she came swooping in to save the day almost half a year ago now. He’d noticed something familiar about her, something that itched in the back of his mind like the way a melody makes you itch for forgotten lyrics. It hadn’t been until he’d had one of his flashes while she was describing her case to him that he’d realized how exactly he knew her.

It hadn’t been anything particularly memorable. One moment he was watching her read over a case file at his desk in Diamond City, and the next he was in another office, one flooded with the pale light of early morning and the scent of fresh coffee wafting through the air. She was reading over a case file in the memory too, but dressed far differently—in a clean blouse with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, her hair done up nice and neat. She glanced up at him after a moment, flashed him a smile and said, “ _Sounds interesting, Detective. Any reason you’re asking for my help?_ ”

He heard himself answer with, “ _Well, don’t you want to join the FBI? It can’t hurt to get some field experience._ ”

That had been a lie, he recalled. Nick Valentine had just wanted an excuse to spend time with his favorite lawyer outside of the courtroom. He’d never really been able to figure out what made him so crazy about her so suddenly, because when they’d first met they’d both been in happy, committed relationships. Something had changed about six months after he’d lost Jenny, and he’d found himself infatuated. He remembered that, for some reason, before the war, he’d been under the impression that maybe she’d begun to return his feelings.

What a stupid thought.

He slid further down in his seat with a soft huff, listening to the slow, even breathing of his partner in the back seat. She sighed in her sleep and if he’d had a heart, he was sure it would have pounded a little harder.

He thought of himself as a separate entity from the “real” Nick Valentine, and he thought maybe she did, too, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that, of _all_ the things he’d inherited from his human counterpart, he seemed to have inherited an infatuation with the woman behind him. He found that the more they travelled together, the harder it became to avoid spilling his ugly, synthetic guts to her. What would she even want with him, anyway? Why would she ever want to be _his_?

His hand twitched towards his pocket, he was itching for a cigarette, but he went still again when he remembered how light of a sleeper she tended to be while they were out. If she smelled smoke, she’d surely end up waking up, if only just to cough. Plus, to smoke while they were stuck in a confined space like this? That was just plain rude—

_He sighed roughly, shifting in his seat to keep the blood circulating. How long had they been sitting here? Three hours? Four?_

_“I’m itching for a smoke,” he grumbled under his breath._

_She snorted, lowering the binoculars to her lap and reaching for her Nuka Cola she’d insisted that he buy her from the vending machine down the street. After taking a sip, she flashed him a smile and asked, “Feeling anxious, Detective?”_

_“More like antsy. You know how many years it’s been since_ I _was on stake-out duty?”_

_She took a longer swig of her soda and slouched in her seat, eyes on the building across the street. “Sorry,” she said faintly. “It’s just been a while since I’ve gotten to spend time with you, and getting cooped up with Sticky Hands McGee didn’t sound like much—”_

_He cut her off with a laugh, warm and full. “Doll, I love spending time with you. Don’t apologize. I just forgot how stir crazy I get when I’m cooped up for a while.”_

_It was chilly tonight, and with the car turned off it was even cold inside the car. He noticed she was bouncing her legs, trying to keep warm, and he felt a little bad for being more bundled up than she was. Concerned, he murmured, “Hey, doll, are you cold?”_

_She shuddered and laughed airily. “A bit.”_

_Without answering her, he opened his arms and grinned, waggling his eyebrows invitingly. She laughed, but leaned into him anyway. He tried to talk himself out of the twinge of guilt he felt—they weren’t cheating. They were sharing body heat, because it was 20 degrees outside and the car was barely holding any heat at all._

_She sighed after a while. “Nate and I had another argument last night.”_

_He squeezed her shoulder, rested his cheek on the top of her hair. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Is there anything I can do?”_

_She didn’t answer as she shifted so that she was looking up at him. His breath hitched in his throat—he’d never been so close to her face before. Was she looking at his mouth? Surely, she couldn’t mean to—_

“Nick?”

He flinched, startled, and cast a wild glance back toward the back seat. Kira was looking at him sleepily, brow furrowed, and he let out a breath softly. “Yeah, doll?” he asked quietly, his voice rough like he’d just woken up.

“Are you alright? Your breathing got all funny and your internals made a weird sort of whirring noise?” she asked. Her voice was still slurred with exhaustion.

She reached for him and he reached back, grabbing her hand and squeezing lightly. She smiled a little. “Another one of those flashes?”

How she could read his face so easily was beyond him, he thought as he laughed a little. “Yeah. I’m alright, though, so you can go back to sleep.”

Kira apparently didn’t need to be told twice, smiling at him warmly and releasing his hand to get comfortable again. He listened to her breathing slow again and he settled back in to his watch duty. Nick was careful now to avoid letting his mind wander, but he couldn’t quite stop the vague sense of worry in the back of his mind. He thought he knew Nick Valentine, but now he wasn’t so sure.

After all, what kind of man was Nick Valentine if he’d helped a married woman cheat on her husband?

He sniffed distastefully and pulled out his screwdriver to tighten the screws on his hand, if only to give him something to do. At least now he was finally beginning to piece together what exactly drew Nick Valentine the synth to her so much, even if it wasn’t as pure of an infatuation as he’d originally assumed.

Still, the memory hadn’t felt quite real.

Maybe Kira could provide better insight if he ever got up the courage to ask her about it. Until then, they had a case to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy cannoli am i really attempting another multi-chapter fic?
> 
> yeah, unfortunately. hancock shenanigans coming next chapter as well as actual plot


	2. Goodneighbor

Nick didn’t stay with her when they got to Goodneighbor early the next morning.

She normally wouldn’t be worried, because he liked to visit with Amari whenever they were in town, and he didn’t always invite her along. She understood that he wanted alone time with his friend, and never begrudged him for it because while he was doing that, she usually went to visit Hancock. He was acting weird this morning, though, avoiding her gaze when she spoke to him and mumbling when he answered. She didn’t think she did anything to make him angry—he’d seemed pretty all right with the sleeping plans she’d come up with last night, anyway.

He didn’t give her a real chance to argue when he said he was going to the Memory Den, mentioning it in passing as he walked off and left her at the entrance.

Kira tried not to let it get to her as she made her way into the State House and up to Hancock’s office.

She wasn’t really surprised to find that he wasn’t in his office. Fahrenheit pointed her in the direction of his bedroom, saying something about how it would do him good to get up before noon for once.

Kira knew she ought to feel a little bad for waking him up, as he’d probably been up until dawn like she knew he did when he wasn’t traveling with her, but she really didn’t. She needed to talk to him about Nick—he’d known Nick for a lot longer than she had, after all.

She knocked lightly on the door Fahrenheit had pointed at, pushing it open to peek into the room. “Hancock?” she asked quietly.

Thankfully, he was alone and rubbing at his eyes as he regarded her blearily. He smiled when he recognized her. “Well, heya, sunshine. Come on in.”

She frowned a little, opening the door a little more. “You sure? I can come back later.”

He waved his hand to usher her in, sitting up in his bed. The blankets fell as he moved, pooling around his waist to reveal his bare torso. She had to force her gaze to remain on his face and not on the V shape of his hips. Her mouth was dry as she pushed the door closed behind her, leaning against it with an easy smile. He wasn’t exactly pretty, but the confidence and ease with which he wore his skin made him infinitely more attractive. She wasn’t sure she’d ever _act_ on her attraction, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate it, right? Especially with the way things were going with Nick.

“Is this a leisure visit, or do you need somethin’?” he asked, his voice pulling her out of her thoughts.

“A little of both,” she admitted. “Nick and I are working a case and we could use your help, but I haven’t seen you in a while, so,” she shrugged.

He laughed lightly and patted the mattress. “Sounds good. Why don’t you come sit? There’s plenty of room.”

Taking his suggestion, she crossed the room and sat next to him, falling back against the pillows with a sigh. She groaned, “ _Oh_ , it’s so nice to be on a real bed.”

“Ain’t it?” he chuckled. He didn’t move to lay back down as he looked down at her. “You look exhausted—when was the last time you slept?”

She laughed and rubbed at her face. “Last night, believe it or not. Nick and I camped out in an abandoned car in the ruins.”

His eyebrows rose. “Really? That’s stupid.”

“Well, if I’d had more than two hours of sleep in three days, we probably could’ve made it here and been able to get a room at the Rexford.”

“Christ,” he hissed. “You need to take better care of yourself, sister. Just because Nick can go forever without stopping, doesn’t mean you don’t need to.”

“Yeah, I know.” She rubbed at her face roughly, and then dropped her hands with a huff. “I think Nick’s mad at me,” she confessed quietly.

“Trouble in robo-boyfriend paradise?” Hancock laughed as he reached over to his bedside table for a cigarette. Placing one between his lips, he offered the pack to her, ignoring her glare entirely.

“He’s not my boyfriend, John,” she argued irritably, pushing his hand away.

He snickered. “Is Ace Detective Valentine not cluin’ in on your signals?”

“Apparently not.”

“That’s what you get for lettin’ yourself get sweet on a synth,” he replied.

She rolled her eyes. “Says the man who cat-calls fucking Assaultrons.”

“Hey, that was one time and I was really, really high,” he argued with a careless shrug.

“That was _three_ times and as far as I could tell you were stone cold sober every single time.”

He laughed, warm and low, as he propped himself up against the headboard and took another drag of his cigarette. She waited for him to speak again as the familiar scent of tobacco smoke filled the air. “Man, I miss traveling with you. When do you think you’ll want me along again?”

She shrugged, fingering a loose thread on the blankets below her. “I always want you along, Hancock. Nick is technically the lead detective, though, so you’ll have to run it by him if you wanna come with us looking for this missing person.”

He hummed, taking another drag. “Oh, yeah, didn’t you say you needed help with something involving a case? What did you need?”

“You know any Ghouls named Jack that live around here?”

He frowned, thinking for a moment, before saying, “I think Dr. Roberts’ first name is Jack. He doesn’t live in Goodneighbor, though. I don’t think he technically lives anywhere—he’s a drifter.”

“Sounds like our man, I guess. Do you know if he’s in town?”

Hancock rubbed at his eyes and shrugged. “You might check the Rexford. Did he say he was going to meet you in Goodneighbor?”

She nodded. “His letter said he’d be here for a week if we decided to take the case.”

“You haven’t met him yet?” he asked incredulously. “How’d you even _get_ this case?”

“A Ghoul can’t exactly waltz into Diamond City, so he sent us a letter. Something about how his girlfriend disappeared from their bed in the middle of the night,” she explained.

“Huh. That is pretty interesting.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, pushing herself into a sitting position. “I guess I’ll go check the hotel, then. You can go back to sleep if you want.”

When she glanced at Hancock, he looked conflicted, chewing on his bottom lip with his brow furrowed. Eventually, he said, “Normally, I’d come with, but I really didn’t go to sleep until about two hours ago, so…”

She stood and stretched, smiling at him warmly. “Don’t worry about it. We can go out together for a while after we finish this case, if you want. I need some fun, anyway.”

He nodded and grinned, putting his cigarette out as he slid back down in his bed. “Gotcha. I'll probably take you up on that offer. See ya around, sunshine.”

“Sweet dreams, John.”

 

* * *

 

Goodneighbor looked almost entirely different to Kira in the daytime than it did at night. It reminded her of Las Vegas, in a way, from what she could remember about that trip she and Nate took for his 23rd birthday. There were a lot of neon lights, with a common warm undertone of red. In the day, that all went away, the atmosphere of sin and drugs and booze fading away to a strange sort of normality that almost had her forgetting the apocalypse entirely.

She hesitated on her way to the Hotel Rexford, gaze caught on the Memory Den for a moment. She thought about going in and telling Nick about her lead, but she figured his visit with Amari wouldn’t be as short as her visit with Hancock.

A warm, spring breeze ran its fingers through her messy hair as she debated with herself, and she sighed, turning away to continue down the street.

The brewing machine man tried to stop her on her way into the building, and she had to bite back her scathing comment as he asked her for the hundredth time when she planned on going to get his machine. Nick would be mad if she said something rude, she reminded herself as she plastered on her best fake smile and assured him that she was working on it. (And, honestly, she would have been had the machine not been right smack in the middle of several Raider and Super Mutant hideouts.) She apparently said this rather convincingly, because the man just nodded and went about his business (whatever that was).

She rolled her eyes behind his back as she opened the door and entered the hotel.

The Rexford’s lobby was strangely empty, she noticed, though the same woman was still working the desk. She seemed to recognize Kira as she walked in, actually smiling a little as she approached the desk.

“Welcome back. You renting with us tonight?” she asked as she leaned on the tabletop.

"Not tonight, no. I’m here on business, actually, and I was wondering if you might be willing to answer a few questions?” she asked, drumming her fingertips lightly against the edge of the counter.

The woman shrugged and said, “You’re one of my best clients. I’d be happy to help.”

“Do you have anyone staying here right now by the name of Jack? He’s a Ghoul we’re supposed to be meeting about a case, and I have reason to believe he might be staying here this week.”

The lady hummed, pulling out her logbook and skimming the names from this week. “I don’t get a lot of people staying for entire weeks,” she said quietly, “and I’ve had a few Ghouls this week. Hmm—ah, there we are. Jack Roberts. I can’t let you go up to his room, hotel policy, but you can stay down here if you’d like. We have coffee and you can order some breakfast, if you want.”

 _Wait, what?_ “You guys have a food service?” Kira asked with a tilt of her head.

The woman looked at her like she was stupid. “Of course we do. What kind of hotel doesn’t at least offer some kind of refreshments?”

Kira nodded thoughtfully. “Good point. What do you have?”

“Mostly Cram and mac ‘n cheese,” she answered with a sniff.

Kire laughed through her nose—what she wouldn’t give to return to the days of eggs and bacon. Rather than mention that, though, she smiled and said, “Well, that’s way better than Bloatfly meat, at least.”

The woman behind the desk laughed dryly. “No kidding. I’ll get one of our employees on that and they’ll bring it out to you in a bit, if you’ll take a seat on one of the couches.”

“Okay, thank you so much.”

She smiled politely and Kira had the feeling that the conversation was over, as the woman immediately returned to wiping down the desk.

Kira settled into the cushions of one of the sofas, pulling out some of the comic books she’d found around the city. She’d read them all before, but she had nothing better to do until their client woke up and came downstairs.

Besides, when she was reading a comic book, she could almost pretend that the world hadn’t already ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my internet is back hallelujah


	3. Remembering in the Memory Den

_The song on the radio filled the air as he turned the volume up, very danceable holiday music floating from the speakers to drown out the howling wind just outside. He grinned at her where she sat on his couch, wearing a pair of his warmest pajamas. She laughed into her mug of hot cocoa._

_“Why, Mr. Valentine, are you trying to get me to dance?” she asked, setting her cup aside and rising to her feet._

_He extended a hand and wiggled his fingers. “Might be,” he laughed._

_She took his hand and he reeled her in, wrapping his arm around her waist to secure her against him, keeping her hand locked in his. She grinned up at him and his heart beat hard against his ribcage, struck once again by how beautiful she was. With her soft curves and flushed cheeks so close, he almost forgot what he was doing._

_They began to sway on the spot, turning in slow circles and he occasionally spun her out and back into his arms. Her musical laughter filled the room, accompanied by his own deep voice._

_The room went a little fuzzy, then, as he rested his forehead against hers and brushed her nose with his. Her gaze zeroed in on his lips just a moment before he leaned in and kissed her solidly on the mouth._

_They had stopped dancing now, though they held their pose as they kissed, his thumb rubbing circles into her hand as he tilted his head and deepened the kiss._

“That’s enough.”

As the memory faded and the pod opened, Nick rubbed at his face and sighed. So the flash he’d had last night hadn’t been the only time, then. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done that, taking another man’s wife from him. What kind of—?

“Those memories were strange,” Amari said, interrupting his thoughts. “They all seemed to get kind of blurry towards the end of them—did you notice?”

He hummed. “Maybe Nick Valentine realized the error of his ways and tried to suppress them.”

“Possibly,” Amari agreed. “But it’s also possible that perhaps they didn’t happen at all. Some fake memories done by people other than me can have that blurry quality to them when viewed in one of our pods, and if they were implanted while you were still in the Institute, it’s possible that whoever implanted them wasn’t a professional at faking memories.”

That did make sense, but it left too many wholes. For one, what kind of sicko sat and coded those kinds of memories just to see what he would do with them? “Why would they implant memories like that, Doc? What purpose would they serve?”

She shrugged, leaning against her desk and crossing her arms. “Perhaps it was a test to see if you would feel guilt, knowing you did something like having an affair. Plus, the Institute knew that Kira was in those cryo-pods all along—they might have been planning to eventually let her out and have you face those memories to catalogue your reaction,” she explained.

“I don’t know. They _feel_ awfully real,” he argued weakly. Part of him wanted them to be real, but a bigger part of him wanted them to be implanted fakes. He wanted to believe that Kira might be interested in him, but knowing that she and the other Nick Valentine had been a thing soured the experience for him. Maybe she really just saw him as an extension of that Nick Valentine, rather than his own person.

But wasn’t that what he was? A copy of the real man, made just to see if they could? Without Nick’s memories, habits, and personality, he was no better than the mindless Gen 1's and 2’s that attacked people.

“Perhaps you should ask Kira about them,” Amari suggested after he went quiet for a moment. “She would have remembered something like that, surely. She could tell you once and for all whether the memories are real or fake.”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Yeah, but how would I even go about asking that? What would it say about me if I asked her whether or not she ever cheated on her husband?”

Amari sighed. “That is just a risk you will have to take.”

He nodded and rose to his feet, straightening his clothes carefully. “You’re right, as always. Thanks a lot, Doc. I’ve got a case to get started on, so I’ll see you around.”

She smiled at him and nodded. “Alright. Goodbye, Nick.”

He left without another word, ignoring Irma when she tried to get him to stay. He needed some time to cool off before he went and saw Kira again—those memories had left him kind of shaken.

He paused a few feet from the door with a sigh, and moved to lean against the wall. It was warm out, according to his sensors, and he wanted to savor the relatively fresh air. It wasn’t often that he actually got a chance to just pause and enjoy being alive, whatever that meant. He knew that, technically, as a synth, the way he _felt_ alive wasn’t really real. He was no more than a bunch of coding and electrical currents.

Then again, weren’t humans just genetic coding and electrical currents?

He knew he shouldn’t compare himself, because it was a circular argument that led nowhere. He could argue for days that he wasn’t really alive, but he could also argue for days that he was. He wasn’t flesh and blood, but he did seemingly have some sort of free will and he definitely had emotions.

His internals said the time was around 9:30 am. He didn’t have time to sit and ruminate on the meaning of life and being alive—not if he wanted to be professional and present for their first meeting with this new client.

Taking a deep breath that he didn’t really need, he pushed off of the wall and started off down the street again.

He was a grown man, whether he was really alive or not. He could shove his feelings aside until after they’d solved this case, however long that took.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is short sorry


	4. Jamaica Plain

“…Aliens. You think aliens did this.”

Kira’s voice was distant in her ears and, through the haze of ‘ _are-you-actually-kidding-me-right-now-what-is-this-The-X-Files’,_ she could feel Nick glaring a hole in the side of her face. This _had_ been her idea, hadn’t it? It was only fitting that the client be off his rocker, because when was the last time she really did anything right?

Dr. Jack Roberts was definitely…something. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the English accent and paranormal conspiracy theory that fell from his mouth hadn’t been quite it. Something about him was familiar, like a name she’d seen or heard a long time ago, but she was sure she didn’t actually know a Dr. Roberts. She was sure her sister hadn’t, either, but there was no way of knowing for sure.

The Ghoul grinned at them both a little sheepishly, running a hand nervously over his baseball cap. If she didn’t know better, she’d say his dark, ruined skin was actually flushed in embarrassment. He laughed breathily, “I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t know how else to explain it. One moment she was there, next to me, and the next there was a bright light and she was gone.”

Nick apparently was beyond words, as he still didn’t say a word, even when both she and Jack looked at him expectantly. After a moment, Kira cleared her throat and looked down at the notes she’d scribbled. “So, we’re looking for a Ghoul named Skye who’s around 5’6”, with short, dark hair and blue-green eyes?” she read. “Well, that’s more of a lead than we had looking for you.”

Dr. Roberts laughed again, rubbing at the back of his neck now. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

She shrugged and smiled. “That’s alright. We figured it out, didn’t we?” Taking a deep breath and flipping her notebook closed, she glanced at Nick and said, “I guess we should start with the scene of the crime. What do you think?”

Nick nodded and she was glad that he hadn’t shorted something out when the word ‘aliens’ came out of their client’s mouth. He had been awfully still for a few minutes, but he was moving normally now. “Seems the best place to start—maybe we can find something he missed.”

Nick rose to his feet, and they followed, though the doctor, being as tall as he was, looked a bit like a baby giraffe as he scrambled to his feet after them. He began to ramble almost immediately as they left the building. “Skye and I were at the Jamaica Plain settlement when it happened. I was there to train up some of the settlers in medical practice, since it’s quite a long ways from a town and I’m only one of a few traveling doctors around the Commonwealth,” he explained.

Kira frowned. “I set up the Jamaica Plain settlement—it’s one of the safest settlements in the Commonwealth.”

Dr. Roberts nodded, turning to look back at her. “Exactly! It was one of the only places we felt we were safe enough to sleep at the same time!” He turned back forward with a sigh as they reached the gate. “That was the biggest mistake of my life, apparently.”

Nick reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Chin up, Doctor. We’re gonna do everything we can to bring her back.”

The Ghoul smiled gratefully and nodded. “Please, call me Jack.”

Nick smiled and nodded. “Jack.”

 

* * *

 

Jack, as they found out, liked to talk. _Really_ liked to talk. In fact, he talked most of the way to Jamaica Plain, twirling his hunting knife idly as he rambled on about whatever popped into his mind. Nick sighed every so often from his place next to her, and she smiled at him every time, but she could tell that the rambling was just a nervous tic.

He paused in the middle of a sentence when they got close to their destination, and said, “I’m sorry for talking so much. I’ve been on the road alone for quite some time, and it’s always exciting when I get the chance to talk to people who aren’t either my students or my patients.”

To Kira’s surprise, Nick actually answered him. “That’s alright. I understand—I spent a lot of time on my own after I climbed out of that garbage heap.”

“Right,” Jack replied, turning to meet Nick’s eyes as he spoke. “I had heard rumors about you, but I wasn’t sure if they were real. And, actually, I’ve heard something about how _you_ , Kira, are supposed to be over 200 years old, but you don’t _look_ like a Ghoul to me, so I don’t quite believe that.”

Kira laughed lightly. “I don’t blame you. It’s pretty weird to me, too. I was in a Vault when the bombs fell, and I’m sure you’ve probably heard about all the experiments that went on in them. In 111, we were told to get into these pods for decontamination or something, but they really just froze us into cryogenic sleep.”

“ _Really?_ Isn’t that something. Are there more like you, then?”

They were right outside of the settlement now, and as they waited for the gate to open, Kira cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Not exactly. My son and I are the only survivors.”

“Yeah? Where’s your son now?” Jack asked curiously.

Kira’s stomach turned. She knew Jack meant well, but she was starting to feel guilty about putting her search for Shaun on the back burner, afraid of the Glowing Sea and afraid of finding him, honestly. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, had never been ready, and had only agreed to the adoption because Nate was going to be there to help. She didn’t know what would be worse—finding Shaun alive, and still a child, or finding him old and gray, having grown up without either of his parents and probably harboring a lot of resentment towards them for not being there.

Nick saved her from having to answer.

“Where were you and Skye sleeping when she disappeared?”

If Jack noticed anything odd about the sudden change in subject, he didn’t show it. He just took off at a brusque pace towards one of the main buildings, smack in the middle of the settlement, completely surrounded by high walls and turrets. Jack was talking about the day she disappeared with Nick—no, he hadn’t seen anything odd; yes, the door to the building had been locked; no, none of the guards actually saw anything aside from the bright flash of light.

Kira wasn’t able to listen all that well, though. As General of the Minutemen, she’d built a lot of these settlements from the ground up. She knew that there was nothing she could have done to prevent this, but she felt responsible. This man had his partner ripped away from him from right under his hypothetical nose—why hadn’t her defenses been enough? What could she have done differently?

As if he could sense her thoughts, Nick caught her hand in his good one and gave it a quick squeeze, giving her a reassuring look as he continued to speak. She squeezed his hand back and smiled a little. _Good old Nick._

“…and we were sleeping in this bed, over here by the window,” Jack’s voice said, breaking through her daze. He hesitated. “She—She got hot in the night, and always wants to sleep near the window if she can—you know, because of the breeze.”

For the first time since they’d met him, Kira could see the loss written into the lines of his face. There had been a small part of her, and she knew Nick had the same suspicion, that maybe _Jack_ had been responsible for his girlfriend’s disappearance, but now she could tell that that just wasn’t true. He looked so lost, standing there in front of the empty bed. There was just no way he could have been responsible for this.

She patted the Ghoul on the arm as she moved to the side of the bed closest to the window, sinking to her knees to see if there were any footprints or anything on the ground. Nick took the other side as she said, “There seems to be some mud on the windowsill, but it’s been wiped at since the night she went missing. Someone crawled in through the window and carried her back out through the window, maybe?”

Nick hummed as he crossed over to her. “Maybe. You think they could have been using a Stealth Boy?”

“Possibly. I mean, there is also always the chance they could be _using_ alien technology, and not actually be aliens, you know?”

The synth scoffed. “Where the hell would they have gotten that?”

Kira blinked and sat back on her heels to give Nick a disbelieving look. “Don’t tell me you already forgot about that UFO crash we saw, and the little green man that tried to kill us.”

“You—You guys saw a spaceship crash?” Jack interrupted, intrigued.

Her gaze lingered on Nick as he ducked his head—she imagined, if he were human, his ears probably would’ve been red with embarrassment. After a moment, she turned to grin at Jack. “Hell yeah—it was the coolest thing I’ve ever encountered, hands down.”

“Didn’t you say you had a friend that worked in the X-Files down at Quantico?” Nick asked, regaining his composure.

She snorted, rising to her feet. “No. I had a friend who _said_ he worked in the X-Files—I’m pretty sure he was just on surveillance, though. He graduated beneath me in the Academy, anyway.”

“You worked for the FBI?” Jack asked. “Do you have a lot of experience with missing persons cases?”

She shrugged, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “A bit. I know I should have mentioned this before, Nick, but this isn’t the first strange disappearance we’ve had. Preston has told me about several down this way, though most of them didn’t have any witnesses. They were all snatched from their beds, though, as far as anyone could tell. I checked out one with him and there was mud on the windowsill there, too.”

Nick sighed heavily. “Sounds like we have a bigger problem on our hands than we thought.”

Kira hummed. “Do you want to split up for a bit? One of us can go around and ask the settlers what they know, and the other can search outside for clues?”

“Yeah. You’ll probably get better answers than I will. Jack? You mind coming with me for a bit? Could use someone to watch my back outside the walls.”

Jack nodded and they headed out, promising to meet back at the gate in about an hour. Kira took a minute to survey the scene one more time as they left—something just wasn’t sitting right with her, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

With a half-hearted sigh and a shrug, she turned to leave the building, only to find a young woman hovering just inside the doorway. Probably barely over 20, she twirled a strand of curly brown hair around her finger nervously and asked, “Are you looking for Skye?”

Kira smiled as warmly as she could. “Yes, we are. Do you know anything that would be helpful to our investigation?”

“W-Well, I was up that night, takin’ care of a kid who had a cold upstairs. Just before the bright light happened, I heard some unfamiliar voices whispering. I couldn’t make out a lot of what they were sayin’, most of it sounded like gibberish ‘cuz it was so quiet, but I heard them mention the Glowing Sea and somethin’ about doin’ their best to avoid goin’ too deep in because ‘they weren’t Ghouls and had no interest in bein’ Ghouls’,” she said, adding air quotes around the line about Ghouls. “Then I heard them say somethin’ about meetin’ up with someone to the south, and that’s when the bright flash of light happened and I heard Skye snarlin’ at them, but it was muffled like someone was covering her mouth.”

The young woman dropped her gaze to the ground and frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do—I didn’t think I could take them on all on my own, and I wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t just start killin’ all of us if I tried to wake anyone up. But now Skye’s gone and I feel like it’s all my _fault_ ,” she murmured, breaking off with a quiet sob.

Kira crossed the floor and wrapped her arms around the girl, shushing her gently. “It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine for not building better defenses.”

She shook her head against her shoulder. “No. We’ve never had any issues until this. It’s an—er, _extenuatin’ circumstance_.”

Kira pulled back with a laugh. “If you say so. I’ve gotta talk to some more people or my partner will tear me a new one. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction—maybe to other people who would have been awake that night?”

Smiling, she nodded and said, “Sure thing! I liked Skye a lot, and I want her to be found safe and sound.”

“Lead the way.”

 

* * *

 

No one else had heard anything that night, as it turned out, which was disconcerting because that meant the lead wasn’t as solid as she would have liked. Still, it was something that they would need to follow up on, as much as the thought of going into the Glowing Sea scared her. She wasn’t sure the kidnappers would have gone into the Sea, especially if they didn’t have the proper protection, so maybe they would also be able to skirt the Sea.

Nick and Jack seemed to have more luck than she did. They met her at the gate and led her around back, where some footprints had been left in the ground, which had since gone dry.

“Now, I thought these tracks might have been Brahmin at first, but Jack disagreed with me so we wanted your opinion,” Nick explained as she bent to examine the tracks further.

“If I didn’t know better,” she said with a hum, tapping the dirt, “I would say these were hoof prints from a horse. Or, well, several horses, it looks like.”

“Exactly!” responded Jack. “In fact, I’ve heard rumors about there still being horses out in the wild, but I’ve yet to come across one. I met a Ghoul on the way up the coast who said there’d been a caravan traveling through with Ghoulified horses—he said they came from somewhere to the west.”

“Well,” Kira said, rising to her feet and smoothing out her shirt. “That, combined with the lead I got, should give us a pretty good starting point. I found a girl in the settlement that heard voices the night Skye disappeared and she said they were talking about the Glowing Sea and wanting to skirt around it if possible. Asking people if they’ve seen horses should get us a little farther than asking about regular caravans.”

Nick set his good hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. She reached up to hold it there for a moment as he said, “Good work, partner.”

She smiled at him sweetly, laying it on a little heavy as she responded, “Thanks, Nicky.”

Jack just chuckled under his breath and suggested that maybe they should stay at this settlement for the night and head out for the Glowing Sea in the morning. It was obvious he was uncomfortable with the idea, but Kira said she’d take the bed by the window and reminded him that Nick was there, and he didn’t need to sleep at all.

“Nick’s the closest thing to safe I’ve yet to come across in this brave new world,” she said reassuringly as they made their way back into the settlement, nudging Jack with her elbow. When she threw a glance back at Nick, he was rolling his eyes.

Jack was looking back as well when she turned to him again and he leaned in closer to stage whisper, “He’s not one for compliments, is he?”

“Nah, he likes them—he just likes being grumpy more,” she whispered back.

Nick sighed loudly from behind them, sending them both into a fit of giggles.

“I can _hear you_ , ya know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's such a weird place to end but it was getting long and this chapter is already five pages sO


	5. Dead Ends and Too Much Thinking

Nick didn’t really know what he was doing anymore. He’d solved more than his fair share of missing persons cases, but they kept hitting dead ends with this one. There were too many loose ends and he was stumped. Between the chem addicts who swore up and down they’d seen horses with six legs going in several different directions, the numerous suggestions of the Institute’s possible involvement (as if they _hadn’t_ immediately entertained _that_ idea), and the people who just said that the good doctor’s brain was probably fried from all the rads, they had reached about zero conclusions.

They had gotten sick of wandering from settlement to settlement about three days into their search. On the third day, after the 17th person to suggest the Institute, Kira gave a mighty sigh and said, “ _Listen, maybe we should just head back to Sanctuary and see if any of our friends up there have any_ original _ideas._ ”

And that’s where they were now. Dr. Roberts had fit right in among the settlers at Sanctuary, most of them just glad to have a real doctor around to treat the minor cuts and bruises that they’d gathered over time. Several of them also just seemed really intrigued with his accent and the fact that he’d been apparently all the way down and back up the East Coast.

Nick had snuck away while everyone was sharing stories, wandering off to the side of the settlement close to the river. He sat on the foundation for one of the houses Kira had cleared away. He imagined the feel of the breeze that blew in across the water and tugged at his brim of his hat as he put a cigarette to his lips and lit it. He took a drag and the smoke billowed out from the tears in his face before he had a chance to blow it back out.

He complained about it, sometimes, being away from Diamond City. Kira would always just roll her eyes and remind him that he didn’t _have_ to come back with her, but the truth was that he really did like being in Sanctuary Hills. It was aptly named, he thought as he watched the way the reflection of the stars played on the waves. It was probably the most peaceful place he’d been since he woke up in that trash pile, and he couldn’t begrudge it for being quiet. Everyone needs a little peace and quiet every now and then—he was no different, even if he liked to pretend he was.

A sudden peal of laughter broke through the night air, from the general direction of where he knew the big campfire always was. He couldn’t make it out any particular words, but it sounded like they were all having fun talking about something.

He sighed. Ellie would have his head if she knew he was isolating himself again—she had always had something to say whenever he spent more than a day or two holed up in his office, working on cases.

It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the company of others, it was just that he wasn’t _used_ to having so many people around. It exhausted him. Usually he was okay traveling with Kira without needing to pull away for a while, since he could always get his alone time while she was sleeping. When there was someone else with him, they often wanted to sit up and talk to him, at least for a little while. He didn’t hate their new client, not by a long shot, but the man talked _a lot_.

The soft sound of approaching footsteps pulled him from his thoughts.

“Nick?”

He smiled and turned to meet her gaze over his shoulder. “Hey, doll. Didja miss me?”

Her answering smile had his internal fans spinning a little faster, and she took a few more steps toward him. “I was just looking for a little fresh air,” she explained. “Mind if I join you?”

He waved his arm towards the concrete next to him. “Please, be my guest.”

She didn’t need anymore prompting, walking straight up to him and settling close to his side. The breeze that blew in across the water must have been kind of cool, because she shivered and leaned into him with a sigh. He watched her bounce her leg for a moment, before he stood and shrugged his coat off, offering it to her with a smile.

“How chivalrous,” she hummed, wrapping it around her shoulders before falling back against the pavement to look at the stars.

Nick watched her for a second, wondering at how at ease she was in his presence, before lowering himself to the ground next to her, his hat skewing as he rested his head against the concrete. He saw her grin in his peripheral vision, and he smiled, too. It was nice whenever they got a minute or two to themselves, just to enjoy being alive instead of being on the look out for trouble.

She scooted a little closer to him and Nick could feel the warmth of her arm through his jacket where she pressed up against him. The back of her hand brushed his, and he was suddenly overcome with the urge to reach out and intertwine his fingers with hers.

While he fought with himself over whether or not to make a move, Kira took a deep breath and said, “I used to love laying back like this and watching the stars. Was never quite this clear, though.”

Nick hummed softly. “Nothing quite like gazing into the infinite cosmic abyss to keep you humble.”

He felt her fingers stroke lightly at the back of his hand, sending little tiny pulses of electricity through his gut in a way he had never felt before. _Does she have any idea what she’s doing?_ he wondered. He desperately wanted to return the touch, but he found himself immobilized, because what if she was just doing that subconsciously? How would she even react if—?

“Is that your secret, Detective? How you’ve stayed humble all these years?” she asked quietly, turning her head to look at his profile as she spoke.

He met her gaze evenly with a smirk. “You kidding? All I gotta do is look in a mirror. This old mug is the best ego check out there.”

Kira smiled at him, brown eyes glinting behind her glasses with something like sadness as she raised her arm to brush the back of her knuckle against the side of his face. “Don’t say stuff like that, Nicky.”

This was his chance, he realized dimly with the part of his mind that wasn’t focused on the feeling of her hand on his face. They were alone and had nowhere to be anytime soon. If he were ever going to ask her about those memories, this would probably be the best chance he got.

But he just couldn’t seem to get the words out of his mouth. Not with her looking at him like that.

If he couldn’t ask her exactly about what he wanted to know, maybe he could ask her something else that was sort of on the right track. As she dropped her hand back to her side, he turned back towards the sky, avoiding her gaze to give himself a tiny bit of courage.

How would he even word that? _Hey, doll, would you smooch a robot? Because, this robot is interested in smooching you_. Please. She’d probably just laugh at him and think he was joking.

Well, whatever. Maybe he’d just open his mouth and let something fall out and see what happened.

He had just opened his mouth when someone else spoke instead.

“Excuse me, Mum. I’m sorry to interrupt, but Mr. MacCready and Dr. Roberts are looking for you,” Codsworth said, floating near the corner of one of the old houses.

Kira pushed herself up onto her elbows to bend and smile at her robot butler. “Thanks, Codsworth. I’ll be right there.”

The familiar whooshing sound of the Mr. Handy faded as he flew back towards the dining area, and Kira groaned as she pushed herself to her feet. Stretching her arms over her head, she turned to look at him as he sat up as well. “I’ll see you later, I guess,” he said, straightening his hat. “Let me know if—.”

“Nuh-uh, Mister,” she laughed. “You’re not gonna mope anymore. This could be important to our case, and you’re coming with.”

He stiffened, caught, and she laughed again as she offered him her hands. “Come on, Detective. Let’s go.”

Nick grinned and let her pull him up. When he steadied himself on his feet, he was closer to her than he could ever remember being, at least while she was awake and not injured. Her lips looked even softer from this—

Kira reached up and snatched the hat from his head, placing it on her own and straightening his coat. She danced away before he could catch her and get it back, laughing, “ _Come and get it, dollface_ ,” as she strode off in the direction Codsworth had headed.

He laughed and shoved his hands into his pockets as he followed behind her.

When he caught up to her again, she was already talking to MacCready and Dr. Roberts, hands in the pockets of his jacket and his hat crooked on her head. He swiped his hat back as he sidled up next to her, winking at her as he put it back where it belonged. She winked at him and there was that stray electric shock in his stomach again—he really should get that checked out.

MacCready cleared his throat, looking a little uncomfortable, as he said, “Anyway, as I was saying, the doctor and I were talking about our time in the Capital Wasteland, and we noticed something…kind of awful, I guess.”

Dr. Roberts shifted on his feet nervously. “We—these disappearances, now that I’ve had time to really think about it, sound like the work of Slavers.”

Nick blinked and shook his head. “No, there aren’t any groups of Slavers this far north,” he argued.

Kira had gone still beside him, and her voice was quiet as she asked, “There’s a slave trade going on now?”

Both of the men they were talking to looked at her strangely. Jack tilted his head and asked, “Did you not know that?”

“No. No, I didn’t. Why—How do we stop it?” she asked, voice as tight as the line of her shoulders.

“Well,” the Ghoul said slowly, “we don’t, really. We’ve tried, and I have a friend down in the Capital Wasteland who has been trying for the better part of the last fifteen years to shut it down completely, and they've made quite a bit of leeway, but there’s only so much we can do.” He paused to scratch at the ruined skin on his chin. “Anyway, Slavers don’t really come up this far because of the Institute and the Minutemen, so if there is a group up here, they’re probably really advanced and skilled at what they do.”

MacCready hummed. “Yeah, but what doesn’t make sense is that several of the disappearances have been Ghouls. Slavers—they usually try and take people who are, you know…young and pretty.” He looked almost as uncomfortable as Kira did at this point. “The fact that they’re taking Ghouls makes this whole situation extra weird.”

Kira still seemed upset about the idea of a slave trade, and Nick certainly didn’t blame her, but she shoved it away, crossing her arms and fixing her gaze on a spot on the wall behind them. “We need to look into this more closely,” she said hesitantly after a moment.

Jack nodded sadly. “Yeah, especially since we still have no clue what that bright light was, or where those horse footprints came from.”

Nick saw her glance over at him briefly as she said, “I’ve been thinking about the bright light, actually, and it sounds a lot like the teleportation that we know the Institute uses to get in and out of their facility.”

“…Do you think this could be the work of the Institute?” Nick asked. He thought she’d already written that off.

She shook her head. “Not really, but I’m sure the Institute can’t be the only organization out there that’s figured out teleportation, right? Or maybe…we could be looking at a defector from the Institute, too. I dunno.”

“Well, if they are Slavers, they probably won’t be heading _through_ the Glowing Sea. They probably don’t have the right kind of protection for that, and not all of the people missing are Ghouls, so they would probably get sick if they went through the Sea,” MacCready mused quietly. “I would probably look at settlements pretty far south and near the Sea.”

Kira sighed and rubbed at her face tiredly. “We’ve tried that, but I guess we’ll have to try again.” She huffed again and tilted her head to pop her neck. “I’m exhausted, so I’m going to head to bed. We’ll come up with a better plan in the morning.”

She was met with a chorus of ‘goodnight’s, but Nick’s got caught in his throat as she trailed her hand all along his shoulders and upper back as she passed behind him. Mouth slack, he turned to watch her leave, barely noticing the fact that she didn’t even try and give him his coat back, pulling it tighter around herself as she walked off towards her house.

His internal fans whirred loudly in an attempt to keep him from overheating, and the men standing next to him were both smirking knowingly when he turned back towards them. He rolled his eyes at them, grumbling under his breath as he wandered off to pretend like he wasn’t falling all over himself for a certain 200-year-old woman.

His glowing yellow eyes trailed back towards her house without his permission, and he sighed heavily as he prepared himself for another long, long night. It was about time he accepted his fate: he was doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nick thinks too much and also this chapter is like five pages too what the heck am i doing jeez
> 
> (also, idk how i feel about this chapter, so it may be subject to change idk)


	6. Nostalgia

She wanted to say that she wasn’t actively trying to flirt with Nick, but that would be a big fat lie.

So far, she had pulled out just about everything in her (admittedly, quite small) arsenal, only to have him barely reciprocate at all. Eye contact that lasted just barely too long, touches on the arm while they were talking, smiles from across the way, a hand dragged across the shoulders every now and again. Hell, the other night she’d even stroked his face and been just this close to holding his hand, yet he still hadn’t done anything to meet her halfway.

Did he not like her? Was she reading the signals wrong? Who knew? All she knew was that she was probably wasting her time, especially since Nick wasn’t the most social while working a case, and that she should most likely just give up and accept that she had missed her chance. She and Nick would only ever just be friends.

Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the chase a little, and slip in as many casual touches as possible.

Take now, for instance. She and Jack were chatting idly on their way to Somerville Place, but Kira was purposefully walking alongside Nick. She bumped her hand against his several times, and whenever he said something snarky, she bumped her shoulder into his with a laugh. It pulled a smile out of him every time, but she got the feeling that he didn’t actually care either way if she was touching him or not.

“You know one of the things I miss most about life before the war?” Jack asked abruptly.

Intrigued, Kira jogged a few paces to catch up to the Ghoul. “What?”

“Football,” he sighed. “I miss being able to turn on the television in the fall and watch whatever games I wanted.”

She tilted her head. “Like, soccer? Or _football_ , football?”

Jack laughed lightly, adjusting his cap to wipe at the gathering sweat on his forehead. “Don’t let the accent fool you, darling. I’m an All-American. I grew up in London until I was 13, but I’m also American by citizenship and birth. My parents just worked there.” He shook his head, side-stepping what appeared to be a hunk of raw meat on the ground. “Anyway, I played in college and I just miss it sometimes, you know?”

_Wait._

Kira gasped and her arm shot out to grab onto his bicep (which was remarkably firm, she noticed). “ _That’s_ where I know your name from!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “You’re Jack Roberts the _Jackrabbit_! You played for Alabama and everyone was talking about you when you graduated because you turned down the NFL to pursue a medical degree!”

The Ghoul seemed shocked by her outburst at first, before he grinned widely and said, “Funny, I didn’t take you for a sports fan.”

She shrugged as she dropped her hand back to her side. “Well, I’m not, really. Football was the only thing I really had in common with my dad, though, and since both my sister and I did marching band, we were exposed to a lot of it in high school.”

“That’s funny, too,” he replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. “My partner said the same thing when I first met her and she realized who I was.”

That was odd, but Kira wasn’t going to put too much stock in that. There wasn’t a lot of room for hope in this brave new world, and the odds that she was actually looking for her sister were just too tiny. “It’s a small world,” she said with a hum.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Nick piped up, closing the distance on her left. “Not with all this damn walking we’re doing.”

“Yeah, well, with all the running this post-war life requires, I’d say all the walking comes in handy,” Jack said.

Kira sighed, hooking her arms through her companions’ arms and studiously ignoring the looks they gave her. With a grin, she said, “I agree, but it’s hard not to miss the comfort that a car with air-conditioning and water-tight doors and windows offered.”

“Ah, you’re right, I _do_ miss being able to drive long distances—the ability to remain dry when it rained a lot was a blessing that I didn’t really appreciate back then,” Jack agreed as he leaned into her side.

Nick didn’t really lean into her as much as he _tolerated_ her hold on his arm, but he smiled as he said, “Yeah, you’re tellin’ me. It’s one thing getting drenched when you’re flesh and bones—when you’re metal and got wires stickin’ out, it’s a whole other story.”

“Hey, you’re the one who doesn’t want to carry around an umbrella,” Kira reminded him, bumping him with her hip. “I keep offerin’ to—”

She got cut off abruptly as a caravan hand came jogging up over the hill up ahead, his shoulders dropping in relief when he recognized them. He continued to jog the last few feet up to them, panting as he called, “ _Doc_ , there you are! We were hoping the rumors about you heading down this way were true!”

“Tommy? Damn, I haven’t seen you in, what, a year and a half? What’s going on?” Jack said, pulling away from Kira to place a hand on the newcomer’s shoulder.

Tommy wheezed, bending at the waist to try and catch his breath. “Ian, the big idiot he is, chased our dog into the Glowing Sea and they both came back after about four hours with radiation poisoning. We don’t have enough medicine to fix him up, but then we heard you might be making rounds down this way and we were hoping—”

Jack held up a hand and started off in the direction Tommy had come from. “Say no more, my friend. Let’s get going.”

Kira and Nick hesitated as the pair hurried off, still arm-in-arm, unsure of what was actually happening. Neither of them seemed to be too eager to move, but after a few tense seconds, Nick cleared his throat and starting moving again. He didn’t shrug out of her grasp, though, so they ended up following the two men almost holding hands. It was odd and she didn’t really know what to make of it.

The caravan camp was set up along the side of the road up ahead, and they could see Jack already knelt beside the sick man where he lay on the ground, pulling out some syringes from his doctor’s bag and administering them as the other members of the caravan hovered anxiously a few feet away.

Kira coughed as she murmured, “Think I’m gonna try and ask around for some information while Jack’s doing his thing,” in Nick’s ear.

He nodded, glowing eyes glancing at her for a brief moment. “Good idea.”

“You wanna come with?”

That pulled a grin out of him as he chuckled and said, “Ya gotta ask?”

 

* * *

 

While Jack was still busy with treating people, who all had apparently not seen doctors since the last time he saw them over a year ago, Kira and Nick snuck away for a little peace and quiet to watch the sunset over the Commonwealth. They’d been sneaking off a lot lately, and Kira wished it meant something, but at this point she figured it was just because they were friends and nothing more.

After a few moments of silence, Kira nudged Nick on the arm. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

He hummed and nudged her back. “Sure.”

“Do you have a lot of the other Nick Valentine’s memories? Or just some?”

He shot her a look out of the corner of his eyes. “Why?”

With a small smile and a shrug, she pushed her glasses farther up her nose where they’d started to slip and said, “I was just thinking about the first time I met Nick Valentine the detective.”

Nick hummed again. “Wasn’t a detective then, was he? You were still in undergrad, weren’t you?”

Her smile widened. “Yeah, I had to meet with a member of law enforcement for class and Nick was answering the phones at the Natick Police Department over by the lake.”

“Why did you call that particular department, again?”

She snorted. “Because the assignment was due the next day and I forgot about it. I was already visiting with one of my friends who lived over that way and it was the closest.”

“You didn’t really meet then, though, remember?” he reminded her. “He didn’t meet you in person until you were working at that coffee shop to pay off your law school tuition.”

“Yeah,” she laughed. “He was trying to suck up to the chief to get a promotion so he started bringing in coffee and donuts.”

They fell quiet for a moment, and Kira closed her eyes as she tilted her head back as a breeze combed its way through her hair, fanning across her face pleasantly. She opened her eyes again after a moment to stare up at the stars already peeking out from the purple-black of night as it swallowed up the sunset. The world may have gone to hell, she mused, but the sky hadn’t changed. If anything, it was even prettier now that she could actually see it.

Nick interrupted her thoughts after another beat of silence. “What made you think of all that?”

“I dunno,” she sighed. “I think talking to Jack about—about the _good old days_ , I guess, just made me kind of nostalgic.”

“Do you ever wish you could go back?”

Did she? It’s a good question, one she’d considered a lot since waking up. The fact of the matter was there were a lot of things she regretted, sure, and maybe things she would have done differently, but to truly go back? To give up all her friends and go back to her white-picket-fence life?

“Nah, not really.”

“ _Really_?” He sounded surprised.

She bit back another laugh. “Yeah, I mean, I just—I dunno, I didn’t really feel like I was _living_ before the war. Things are shit now, and there’s danger around every corner, but I have lots of friends and I feel more alive than I have in years. It’s weird, but I think I like life better now than I ever did before.”

“…Well,” Nick said after a breath of silence. “No accounting for taste, but that’s a good answer, I suppose. Makes some kind of sense, but I don’t know if I could explain it myself.”

She sighed deeply and leaned over to rest her head on his shoulder. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Nicky.”

They dissolved into laughter as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

 

* * *

 

Jack sighed as he sank into his sleeping bag later that night, exhausted after having treated no less than 5 people and one dog for high levels of radiation. Kira picked at the sticker on the side of her water bottle as she considered him. It was admirable that, 200 years later, he still found it in himself to have the compassion to help treat people who could barely afford to pay him anything. She wasn’t sure she could’ve done it.

He turned onto his side after a moment to face her and Nick. “Did you find out anything from them? Or are we going to still need to ask around Somerville Place?”

“Yeah, actually. They said they saw a couple of men on horses heading south through the edge of the Sea. They weren’t Ghouls, so they probably didn’t stay in for long, but that just means we’re heading the right direction. If they’re Slavers, they probably have a pit stop near the edge of the Commonwealth,” Nick said, eyes trained on the orange flames in the center of their corner of camp.

Kira hummed and added, “We’re going to spend some time picking through the ruins along the coast, I think. One of them mentioned something about odd radio broadcasts from down that way, so that might end up being a clue as well.”

Jack covered his eyes with his arm. “Heading out first thing in the morning, then?”

“Yep,” she answered, leaning in closer to Nick and settling against his side. “Sweet dreams, Jack.”

The Ghoul turned onto his side, facing away from the fire, and sighed. “Hmm, you, too, Kira. See you in the morning.”

The camp went quiet and she really should have returned to her own sleeping bag, but she was tired and she had every intention of falling asleep on Nick. Hopefully tomorrow they could actually get moving on this case. The longer their victims were missing, the more of a chance there was that they’d either be long gone or dead before they found them—and Kira really hated failing like that. She’d probably never forgive herself.

Just as she drifted off, she felt Nick’s arm come up and curl around her to pull her closer. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so safe.

For the first time in a long time, she didn't dream at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god i finally finished this chapter thank god
> 
> we're probably looking at three to four more chapters left right now, i think, just so you know
> 
> EDIT: holy cheeseballs, batman, y'all really like this fic. i'll try and drag it out a little if i can and if not--don't worry because i plan on writing a lot more with these nerd babies because i love them all and also i have like at least five more ocs that could possibly get fics so nO WORRIES IM NOT GOIN ANYWHERE


	7. A Minor Inconvenience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all are so sweet honestly ily

“ _Watch it!_ ” Nick hissed, reaching out quickly to grab Kira by the arm and pull her back behind cover.

They’d run into a small pack of Raiders on their way south, following a trail of hoof prints that Kira had found. If it hadn’t been so damn foggy out, maybe the Raiders wouldn’t have been an issue, but they’d managed to sneak up on the three of them because of the low visibility. The low visibility also meant that there was no way to pick them off from a safe distance—their only hope was to sit and hope the Raiders got bored, or run headfirst into the fray and hope for the best.

Nick knew he would survive running in alright, assuming none of the Raiders had anything like a minigun or a missile launcher (which he doubted they did—they’d have used it by now). The problem with that particular course of action would be that Kira and Jack would probably follow his lead, and they were both made of much less durable material than he was. Damn it all.

He could just barely make out where Jack had taken cover across the street, his long legs managing to carry him farther away from the action than Nick or Kira could have. He could tell, by the tightness of his shoulders, that Jack was just as frustrated as he was with this whole situation. Worried, Nick also noticed a red blotch on Jack’s shoulder that wasn’t there before—and it was growing. If they didn’t do something soon…

“Any ideas?” Kira breathed, leaning against the wall in front of him.

He looked down to answer her, to tell her that he had absolutely no clue what to—

_“Isn’t this fun, Detective?” she laughed breathlessly, pulling him closer, farther into the shadows as the men they were trailing paused and looked around like they could feel eyes on them._

_Nick didn’t particularly find this fun, so he didn’t really know what she was talking about. Their lives were in danger with every step they took towards the gangsters half a block ahead of them—what the hell was fun about that? “You sure you didn’t hit your head when you tripped earlier?” he whispered back, raising a hand to prod at an imaginary spot on the side of her head._

_She laughed softly. “I don’t get out often enough, I guess,” she answered, peeking around the corner at their targets, who appeared to now be just chatting—a diversion tactic if he’d ever seen one._

_Just as he was about to say something, the men turned and began walking back down the street, right towards where they were currently hiding. They would see them and their cover would be blown._ Think, think, think _, Nick thought frantically, glancing around wildly for an escape route. Before he could get much farther than that, he felt a pair of soft hands slide around his shoulders and into the hair at the nape of his neck. He opened his mouth to argue with whatever she was planning, but before he could get anywhere, she tugged and met his mouth with her own._

_He gasped against her mouth, surprised, and she took advantage of the chance, drinking in the opening of his lips eagerly and leaving him clutching desperately at the brick wall behind her in an attempt to stay upright with his suddenly shaky knees. Trying to ground himself, he pulled back to breathe, only to have her continue pressing kisses to his jawline. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but his resolve was weakening by the second. Her breath washed over his ear a moment later, and he groaned softly, dropping his head and pressing further into her._

_He felt her smile as she murmured, “Public displays of affection tend to make people really, really uncomfortable.”_

_It took a second, but it finally clicked in his head what she was saying. He could hear the men they were following snickering to themselves as they passed and he laughed lightly. “Good thinking, partner,” he replied softly, dipping in for one last kiss._

_The way she leaned into it, eyes closing with a sigh, was almost enough to make him forget about the little metal band he could feel on her left hand._

_“—_ Nick!”

He blinked and the world came into focus again. Kira was looking up at him worriedly, and he could feel her hands on either side of his face. “Nick, talk to me. Tell me you’re alright,” she said quietly.

What was she talking about? He was obviously fine, he thought vaguely. His eyes focused on her lips as she spoke, and he couldn’t help but drift a little closer to her—they just looked so _soft_.

“Nick,” she repeated, tightening her grip on his face to keep him in place. “Don’t you collapse on me. What’s going on?”

The sound of gunfire woke him up completely, the taunting jeer of one of the Raiders solidifying the world around him. He wasn’t Nick Valentine the man—he was Nick Valentine, Synth Detective. He closed his eyes and shook his head, shaking away the last of the memory before responding, “It’s nothing, doll. Just a flash.”

“You gonna be okay?” She still sounded worried.

He nodded, taking a deep breath that his body didn’t really need and looking away from her. The fog was starting to lift now, and a glance around the alley that they’d hidden in revealed a fire escape nearby. If they could climb up that quietly enough, Kira could pull out her sniper rifle and take some of them out.

She followed his line of sight and paled. “Nick, that thing is about a hair’s breadth from falling off that building.”

He walked over to it, tugging experimentally on the end of the ladder. It groaned unsettlingly under his touch, but it didn’t really seem to move much. “I wouldn’t let you fall,” he began.

Kira crossed her arms and glared at him. “ _Absolutely not_.”

He huffed. “Do you have any _better_ ideas?”

She glanced away, gnawing at her lower lip as she thought. After eyeing the rusty fire escape for another moment, she sighed heavily. “ _Fine_. If I fall and break my legs, I fully expect you to carry me around until it heals,” she grumbled as she walked over to him. Experimentally, she raised a hand to reach for the ladder, only to come up a few inches short. Turning to look at him expectantly, she said, “You’re going to have to pick me up.”

Thanking his lucky stars for once in his life that he had no blood pumping through his veins to make his face flush, he shrugged and wrapped his arms around her waist. Studiously ignoring the strange little jolts of electricity deep in his gut, he lifted and she managed to grab onto the last rung of the ladder. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he saw her climb something, either before or after the war, but she didn’t seem to be straining in the slightest as she climbed up the ladder as quickly as she could. Once she reached the platform, she hesitated as it rocked a little under her weight.

He held his arms out, ready to catch her, but it steadied again and he heard her sigh in relief. “Getting down from here is gonna be a bitch,” he heard her mumble under her breath. She peered into the broken window beside her and said, “I don’t think there’s anyone in there. I’m gonna try and see if there’s a window on the other side of the building I can get to.” She turned to look over at where Jack was trying to return fire, to keep the Raiders occupied. “You think you can reach Jack? He’s bleeding pretty bad and I think he dropped his bag when they first jumped us.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. Be careful?”

She smiled a little, one leg already through the broken window. “Always, Nicky. See you soon.”

Kira disappeared into the building after that and Nick sighed again, staring across the street.

The Raiders weren’t really advancing at all, or trying to. It seemed to him that they were almost protecting something—maybe a hideout. Whatever the case, he needed a distraction so that he could make a run for it. He dropped to his knees to rummage through their bags, trying to find something, anything, he could use. After another moment of digging, he found what he was looking for: some pulse grenades. The things made him nervous as hell, seeing as they were designed for robots, but they did a pretty good job against humans, too.

Pulling the pin on two, he tossed them into the street and listened for the detonation.

His sensors said that he had actually caught one of them in the blast, but he didn’t take much more time to notice anything else, darting across the street and to Jack’s side. The Ghoul winced and fell back against the wall, clutching at his shoulder with a bloody hand.

“You—You got any s-stimpaks in that bag?” he panted, eyes hazy and unfocused. He’d lost too much blood.

Nick dug in the bag, hoping Kira hadn’t decided to rearrange anything again, and sighed in relief as he spied their stash of healing supplies. “Yeah,” he replied, pulling out two. “Is the bullet still in there?”

Jack shook his head, reaching for the bag and pulling out a dose of Med-X, jabbing it into his thigh with a grimace. “It was a clean shot,” he answered, reaching for one of the stimpaks. He frowned when Nick just shook his head and leaned over to do it himself. “Where’s Kira?”

“She’s trying to get us out of this mess. She sent me to patch you up,” Nick said. “Do you think you need a blood bag?”

Jack shook his head again, already looking more lucid than before. “No, I think I’m alright. It was just hurting a lot, but the Med-X has already dulled that.”

“Right. Well, I think we’re just sitting ducks for the—”

_BOOM!_

Nick and Jack flinched, before glancing around the corner to see what had caused that explosion. A row of cars was on fire and the burning lumps on the ground beside them looked mysteriously like bodies. They heard laughter from across the street, and when they looked, Kira was half hanging out of the window, grinning widely at them.

“Am I a good shot or _what_?”

 

* * *

 

They ended up only walking a few more blocks that day. Jack insisted he was fine, that he could keep going, but Nick knew better. His breathing was labored, his skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and he winced with every other step he took. Kira must have noticed, too, because she was the one who decided they were going to stop for the night, citing her own sore arms and slightly sore ankle as the reason to keep Jack from arguing. The doctor seemed relieved, if nothing else, when he finally got to lie on his sleeping bag and rest for a moment.

This definitely wasn’t an ideal situation, Nick thought. Jack was a good man to have around, with his medical skills and pension for filling the silence with funny stories. He was injured now, though, and there was no telling what they would be going up against when they finally found whoever’s been kidnapping people all across the Commonwealth. He would be more of a liability than anything, now, but Nick wasn’t sure he could talk Kira into believing that.

She didn’t say much before she went to bed, in any case. She redressed Jack’s injury and retreated to her own little corner of their campsite, apparently more exhausted than she’d let on previously. She went still within minutes.

Nick would keep watch, as always, and settled into his normal lookout routine, carefully avoiding any thoughts that would lead him back to the flash he’d had earlier that day.

A few hours after he was sure everyone was asleep, he heard Jack get up and cross the campsite to settle beside him.

“Can’t sleep?” Nick asked quietly, keeping his eyes on their surroundings.

Jack hummed. “Time for another dose of Med-X soon,” he replied through a yawn. “I haven’t actually got the chance to talk to you on your own, though, so I thought I might take the opportunity while I was up.”

Nick fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m really not that interest—”

“Now, don’t go and sell yourself short, mate. I’m actually trying to help you,” Jack interrupted. “I see the way you look at her, you know.”

Startled, Nick’s eyes snapped to Jack’s face, narrowing when Jack just shrugged his good shoulder and smiled innocently. He wasn’t in the mood for this, whatever it was, but he couldn’t be rude if he wanted to avoid a lecture. Sighing, he gave in and decided to play along. “And how, exactly, do I look at her?”

“Like she hung the moon and all the stars in the sky, just for you,” Jack replied quietly. He laughed after a beat of silence. “And, trust me, I know that look when I see it. I’ve seen it in the mirror more times than I can count in the past three years or so since I met Skye.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think his synthetic facial features were that open that a veritable stranger could see just how smitten he was with his partner in solving crime. In fact, he was pretty sure his face plate left a lot to be desired in the way of facial expressions, so how could Jack have possibly seen that specific of a look on his face?

When Nick still didn’t answer after a minute, Jack sighed. “Mate, I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. I’m just here to tell you that I am almost 100% sure that she is just as into you as you are her.”

Nick couldn’t quite stop himself from immediately asking, “How can you be so sure?”

The Ghoul grinned, unfazed, and said, “I _was_ a pretty big deal in college. I think I know pretty well what it looks like when a girl is really into someone.”

“Wh…” _This is an awful, terrible idea._ “Why do you think she would ever be interested in me?” he asked hesitantly.

The Ghoul shrugged again. “Why not?”

Nick frowned. “Well, I’m not real, am I?”

Jack snorted softly, careful not to disturb Kira where she slept on the other side of the camp. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I’m a _robot_. Sure, I _think_ I can feel, but when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, all I am is a bunch of wires and empty memories of a flesh-and-blood man who died a long, long time ago,” he argued. “What’s worse is that she _knew_ the flesh-and-blood Nick Valentine, so I don’t know why she would ever settle for the fake one.”

Jack rolled his eyes dramatically. “Mate, I am fairly positive that if she really felt like that, she wouldn’t be here. It’d be too hard for her to look at you and have you not really be _him_. She wouldn’t have stuck around if she didn’t think of the two of you as completely separate entities.”

Nick wasn’t convinced. This man didn’t know Kira, not like he did. How could he know any better than Nick himself? It was a bad idea to get into this discussion with him, and he should have shut it down way before it got to this. To distract himself a bit, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking a drag and sighing, “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Believe what you want—I’m just telling you what I’ve observed.” He shifted in preparation to stand, placing a friendly hand on Nick’s shoulder for a second. “You ever wanna talk about anything, you know where to find me.”

And then he was gone back to his sleeping bag, taking his dose of Med-X before lying down without another word. Nick watched him for a moment, tossing what he’d said around in his head a few times.

Could it be true? Could he just be missing the hints because he’s been too wrapped up in his own existential crisis? _Did_ Kira feel the same way about him as he did about her?

 _Whatever_ , he thought, sinking a little farther into his makeshift seat. _I’ll figure it out some other day. We’ve got a case to solve right now. No more pining after her until it’s_ over _._

Even in his head, the words sounded pretty empty. There was no shoving these feelings aside, he knew, but he had to try—if not for his own sake, then for her sake, for Jack’s sake, for all those missing people’s sakes.

Real man or no, it wasn’t in him to let down that many people on account of some meddlesome emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while since we had a flash so i thought it was about time i remedy that
> 
> i think its about to get plot heavy (i hope i feel like i keep stalling it idk) so yeah the next chapter will probably be a while unless i get super motivated all of a sudden?
> 
> love you guys


	8. Missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your nice comments fuel me just fyi

It took all of Kira’s apparently quite strong willpower to stay still, to keep her breathing slow and even. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, she really hadn’t, but she’d heard Jack get up and it had woken her up a little. She worried about him and his shoulder, and she supposed that was making her a little jumpy, especially after the day they’d had. So when he got up and went to sit by Nick, she just couldn’t help but overhear what they were talking about.

And, hell, if there was anything she was expecting them to talk about, that definitely wasn’t it.

Nick liked her, too? Was she dreaming? Should she get up and go talk to him?

No, she decided, she needed to rest. They had a case to solve and that wouldn’t help anything—if nothing else, it would serve as a distraction from the task at hand. Besides, her body was heavy and her eyes were drooping, listening to the quiet rustle of the wind in the trees. Now was the time for rest.

There would always be time for talking after this was all over with, she was sure.

 

* * *

 

“Are you _absolutely certain_ that what you’re picking up on isn’t just _interference_ from the radiation of the Glowing Sea?”

Kira frowned, fiddling with the radio on her Pip-Boy and studiously ignoring the very exasperated pair of men standing on either side of where she sat on a hunk of concrete on the side of the road. The radio released a few more odd beeping sounds as she turned the dial. “I’ve never heard interference like—”

“ _Absolutely certain_ ,” Jack repeated, frustrated. He had his arms crossed and a hip cocked, looking every bit like an angry parent. Normally, she’d snap right back at him, but he was injured, probably sore, and they _had_ been working on his case for almost two weeks now with barely any leads or direction. She’d be cranky, too, were she in his place, so she let it slide.

She sighed softly and shifted her weight to keep her legs from falling asleep. The radio static hitched, and she pursed her lips. “Well, _no_ , but _hush_. I think there’s a pattern in the beeps?” She turned the volume up a little, and sure enough, the beeps repeated, too evenly spaced to be random noises caught between static. Experimentally, she turned to face another direction, and they simultaneously got quieter and came in a different sequence.

“Is it a distress signal?” Nick asked after another beat of silence.

She shrugged. “Usually distress signals are just straight quarter notes, but this one has a funny little pattern to it.”

Nick sat next to her on the concrete, eyes on her Pip-Boy, going still to listen to the signal. She forced down the heat she felt rising up her neck through sheer force of will, ignoring the little flutter in her stomach, too. It became a little more difficult when he reached over and pulled her hand closer, presumably so he could hear the signal better.

“Doesn’t sound like Morse,” he said at last, releasing her hand and rising to his feet again. “The only clear choice I can see is to just follow it and see where it takes us. What do you two think?”

Kira glanced at Jack, who appeared to actually be thinking about it. Nick wasn’t really asking her, she knew, because he knew how she thought at this point. He probably already knew that that was her plan from the very second she’d picked up the radio signal. At length, Jack gave a one-shouldered shrug and said, “If you think it’ll get us closer to Skye.”

Kira rose to her feet with another sigh and smiled a little up at the tall Ghoul, patting his arm in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. “I think we’re on the right track. I’ve got a good feeling about this,” she told him as she reached down and hefted her bag back onto her shoulders. That was a little bit of a lie—the feeling she had about this wasn’t exactly _good_ as much as _dread_. This was the right track, she was pretty sure, but this road might lead them to something unpleasant.

The trip was slowing a crawl, as she had to keep adjusting course when the signal faded or changed at all, often ending up with them walking in circles for a few minutes while she tried to figure which direction to go. Both of the men with her, by the time the sun was starting to set, were fed up with her and the stupid radio signal. This was why she hardly ever followed distress signals—it wasn’t that she didn’t care. It was just that by the time she managed to find the source, whoever needed help was almost always already dead. It was discouraging and a waste of time.

She walked ahead of them a ways, hoping to figure out where they were supposed to be going more quickly to keep them from getting even more frustrated with her than they already were. She turned around to say something, she wasn't sure what, only to find that Nick and Jack had both disappeared.

She wasn’t sure how they would have gotten separated. Panicking a little, she wandered around in the general area for a bit, confused beyond belief, trying to find her friends, until she wandered down an alleyway and found herself face-to-face with someone in a very odd-looking radiation suit. The glass over their face was so tinted that she couldn’t see their face at all.

The most prominent thing she noticed wasn’t the suit, however. It was the horse that stood a few feet behind them.

An icy feeling of dread settled into her stomach as she looked back at the person in front of her—they were probably a Slaver.

They pulled something off their belt that looked just like a short rod of some kind, and shook it once. The rod elongated into a baton, and the familiar hum of electricity filled the air. Kira felt her face pale at the sound, and the person behind the mask laughed quietly. “This is going to be so fun,” said a feminine voice. “You ready?”

“Aw, hell,” was all Kira could say before the woman lunged at her.

Kira was always good at dodging—that had been her self-defense teacher’s first and most important lesson—so she managed to dodge to the right, avoiding the rubble at her feet as she skirted around her attacker so that she was behind her. The woman spun on the spot and Kira danced around her again, always staying just behind her. She couldn’t keep this up forever, but she kept doing it until finally the woman tripped over her own feet, losing her footing on the gravel.

Jumping at the chance, Kira grabbed her arm and stabbed her elbow down into the bend of the woman’s arm, delighting a little in the way she cried out and dropped the baton.

Seizing her chance, Kira lunged for the weapon, not even bothering to rise to her feet again as she slammed it into the woman’s side. She held it there until the woman collapsed and went still.

Kira took a few deep breaths and added a few savage kicks to the woman’s side for good measure.

She didn’t know where Nick and Jack were, but as she stood above her attacker, an idea began to form. Instead of breaking into the compound, assuming she could find it, what if she could just walk right in? If she took the suit and the horse, maybe she could just convince them to teleport her in (because she was pretty sure that was how they were doing their little act), and she could just walk through the front doors like one of their own.

Considering that she didn’t know where the hell her companions were, this was probably her best bet of at least continuing their case.

It didn’t take her long to undress the woman who’d attacked her. After she zipped up the suit, she considered the still-out-cold Slaver at her feet. Looking around, she noticed a pouch attached to the saddle on the horse. Shushing the horse to make sure it remained calm, she dug around in the pouch and found a pair of handcuffs.

Satisfied after binding the Slaver’s hands that she wouldn’t be followed, and that her cover wouldn’t be blown (at least, not by this person walking in and ratting her out), she turned her attention to the horse.

Now, she’d only been horseback riding once or twice in her whole life, and she really hadn’t cared for it. She had actually found the horses kind of scary. Of course, that seemed silly now as she considered the great, ugly beast in front of her. It looked like something straight out of a horror novel—something the Headless Horseman would ride, or maybe even Death itself.

Luckily, the horse seemed completely docile, to the point that it probably would have shrugged at her if it could. It stood still and let her mount it without complaint, in any case. (It might have been the outfit, but she wasn’t about to complain.)

She rode it a little ways down the street, keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of her friends, when some sort of radio flared to life inside the helmet.

“Yo, Morrison, did you find that girl yet?”

Deepening her voice a little to match the timber of her attacker and trying not to panic, she replied, “Uh, about that…”

The person on the other end sighed heavily. “Honestly, Morrison, if you keep fucking up like this, Kraus is gonna turn _you_ into a Ghoul next.”

 _Holy shit_ , Kira thought. _They’re turning people into Ghouls?_

Clearing her throat, she laughed nervously and said, “Yeah, I know. She works for Valentine, though, so I think he’ll understand.”

The man hummed. “I hope so, for your sake. Anyway, if you’re ready, we’re gonna teleport you back now.”

Kira most definitely wasn’t ready, but she said, “I’m ready,” anyway.

Teleportation, Kira decided, was weird as fuck.

Her entire body felt weightless for a split second, and then she felt like she was being squeezed through a tiny tube made entirely of white hot metal. She couldn’t breathe and the panic had just set in when it stopped abruptly.

The horse didn’t react at all, used to the sensation apparently, but she really, really had to fight to keep from vomiting all in her helmet.

Her Geiger counter was going crazy on her wrist, which was unsettling, but luckily she’d turned down the volume on that particular function earlier that day.

A tall man in another radiation suit approached her, and for a second she was sure her cover was about to be blown. Fortunately, she was about the same height as the woman she’d taken down, and he didn’t notice a thing. All he did was clap her on the shoulder and say, “I’ll talk to Kraus for you. Why don’t you go and rest a bit—I know you’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

“Right,” she said, just barely remembering to deepen her voice. “Thanks a lot, man.” _Shit_.

The man nodded, not noticing anything odd apparently, and turned away to go further into the compound, leaving her to her own devices. She was glad for her FBI training—without it, she probably would have panicked by now and blown what little bit of cover she had.

She wanted to go and see if maybe they’d already caught Nick and Jack, but she figured they could wait. This might be the only chance they had to find Skye without having to shoot their way through the place.

Mind made up, she set off down the hall to do some exploring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> saddle up we've got like 9-10 more chapters to go get hype
> 
> edit: holy shit i made a horse joke wHOOPS
> 
> another edit: idk if yall actually care but i had an idea in my head for how kira looked when i started writing this but now she's basically just mulan with messy hair, glasses, and like a shade or two darker skin tone. do with that what you will.


	9. Get Him Monologuing

Nick honestly could not remember the last time he’d been kidnapped. Usually, whenever he was taken, it was because he decided to walk into a trap. A stun baton to the back and a bag over his head was entirely new.

He didn’t put up a fight, knowing full well that there was a chance that whoever they were would just kill them and be done with it. He wasn’t sure that they were actually important to whatever it was that was happening. He heard Jack cursing and it sounded like he landed a few solid kicks on a couple of them, judging by the grunts, but he went still after Nick hissed his name under his breath. Fighting back wouldn’t do much good and considering that the sound of hooves on the pavement sounded awfully light to be Brahmin, that meant these were the people might be the people they were looking for anyway. Hopefully they would take them where they wanted to be—hopefully they would take them right to Skye.

“Is the bag over the head really necessary?” Nick asked irritably as someone shoved him in the back to make him start walking.

He heard muffled grumbling from somewhere on his right—it sounded like they’d gagged Jack on top of everything else. Nick tugged experimentally at whatever they’d tied around his hands, and was disappointed when it had very little give. He sighed heavily as whoever was behind him shoved again.

“You wanna keep your mouth shut, synth. Especially if you ever wanna see your little girlfriend again,” one of their kidnappers sneered.

“ _Don’t you touch her_ ,” Nick snarled through the very real fear that crept into his mind.  _Please._

They laughed, and by the sound of it there were about five of them—two for each of them, he assumed, but he had no idea where Kira was. Had they already killed her? Had they only sent one person after her, and that was why there were only five of them instead of six or four?

“Or what, Detective? You’ll hurt us? Take us to jail? You ain’t exactly in a position to be making threats, you know.”

They were right, of course, but that didn’t mean he had to let them know it. He bit back the urge to argue, focusing instead on the ties around his wrists. If he could slip his skeletal hand under the rope, maybe he could—

“Hey, Boss Man says we gotta come back now since we got two of the three,” one of them said, interrupting his train of thought.

“You think Morrison is gonna be alright with the girl?”

“Please. She’ll be fine. Let’s head out.”

He was just entertaining the idea of whether or not he could pull off the ‘I’m rigged to explode’ gag again as he listened to them chat, when one of the men sighed and said, “Hold on to your ass, shuffler, or it might fall off while we’re teleporting.”

Jack’s vicious snarling was the last thing he heard before they were moving—and he used that word very loosely.

It was a weird sensation, and Nick couldn’t really describe it other than he felt really…squished. It was uncomfortable, borderline painful, and he didn’t like it one bit. When they landed, he stumbled a little and had an odd sort of phantom memory kind of feeling like he wanted to throw up. He was glad at the moment that he was all machine, and he couldn’t actually experience that unpleasant physical response anymore.

The bag was removed from his head, and when he glanced over at Jack it was just in time to see him bend at the waist and heave, luckily having somehow removed his gag before he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the metal flooring at their feet. Jack wasn’t as lucky as Nick was when it came to bodily functions, it seemed.

“You alright, Doc?” Nick asked worriedly.

Jack stumbled as he straightened back up, off balance with his arms tied behind his back as they were, and rubbed his mouth against his shoulder in an attempt to clean up a little. He took a deep breath and nodded. “I think so. Just a bit woozy is all. Teleportation is entirely unpleasant.”

Nick scoffed lightly. “Couldn’t agree with you more, there.”

It was then that Nick noticed their captors and their odd attire. They were in radiation suits, and that was probably a good thing if Nick’s internal Geiger counter was to be trusted. The suits were an ugly, grey-blue color, and the glass over their faces was so dark that it was impossible to make out any kind of facial feature behind them. There were little devices on their wrists that almost looked like Pip-Boys at first, but were far too small for that, the closer he looked. A couple of their captors headed off down a hallway with their ghoulish horses, and the rest stayed with Jack and Nick, standing closely together with their backs to them, like a group of mean girls trying to ignore a couple of geeks who were walking past them in the high school hallway.

He cast a glance at Jack, who returned it knowingly.

_What the hell have we walked into?_

“Right,” a new voice said as another person in a suit appeared around the corner. “Kraus has asked to see you both, if you’ll follow me right this way.”

As if they had any kind of choice, two lackies flanked them on either side, forcing Nick and Jack to walk a little closer to each other to avoid running into them. Nick wasn’t as tall as Jack, unfortunately, but he still tried his best to catalogue everything he could see and try to formulate some kind of escape plan.

The place seemed pretty fortified, he realized after a little while. It was also built like a damn maze, probably to deter escape attempts. The walls and floor were metal, which reminded him of a Vault, but it wasn’t built like any Vault he’d ever seen. Vaults tended to have nice lighting and windows and things to make life a little nicer. This place’s lighting was dim, for some reason, and most of it was orange lighting from rows of lights on either side of the floor.

Every now and then, after some of the turns they took (he was glad he was a synth, for once, with a flawless memory, because he could retrace their steps on the way out fairly easily, if he made sure to keep paying attention), there were rooms with brighter, white lights. He got a glimpse into one with a door that was wide open, and it looked like some kind of operating room.

They stopped after about twenty minutes of walking, and as many crossing hallways as they’d come across, Nick was almost 100% sure that they took them on a roundabout path to confuse them.

The door they opened, opened up into a meeting room with a long, wooden table in the middle with cushy office chairs littered around the side.

There was a Ghoul standing up near what looked like a chalkboard, and he had turned when the door opened.

Ghouls, as a general rule, did not look ‘good’. They all appeared to be at varying stages of decay, even though in most cases that was the farthest thing from the truth. _This_ Ghoul, however, looked like he was about to fall apart if the wind blew the wrong way. At first glance, Nick had almost thought he was a feral, the way he was disfigured. His skin looked melted to an even worse degree than any other Ghoul Nick could really remember meeting—looking more like a victim of acid burn than anything else.

He was pudgy and round, and he hunched so much that he was half supporting himself on the cane in his right hand. His eyes were bloodshot, the ring of blue around his pupils diluted so that it almost looked grey.

He smiled (or, he tried, at least) at Nick and Jack when he saw them.

“Dr. Roberts! Detective Valentine! So good of you to join me. Gentlemen, let’s untie our guests, shall we? They’re our _guests_ , after all, and we don’t tie up guests,” the Ghoul said in a thin, dry voice that reminded Nick of a dead leaf in the fall.

Nick and Jack exchanged another look as the ropes were removed from their wrists. It was obvious neither of them really knew what to make of this turn of events, though Jack eyed the door contemplatively the second they shut it behind them.

Nick was about to tell Jack to not try anything when the Ghoul—Kraus, he assumed—spoke again. “Gentlemen, please have a seat. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting the two of you—especially you, Dr. Roberts. Such a bright mind—it’d be a shame for me to not utilize it while you’re here.”

Jack didn’t budge an inch. All he did was cross his arms and plant his feet more firmly into the floor. Nick glanced at Kraus, and then at the scribbling on the board behind him, and sighed. He touched Jack’s arm briefly, shooting him a look before sitting in one of the seats closest to the door. Jack rolled his eyes and sighed, but followed his lead.

“Look,” Jack began heavily, “I’m not here to be your friend. I’m here because you’ve got my girlfriend and I want her back.”

Kraus smiled vapidly and started to speak as though Jack had never spoken.

“I am so thrilled to hear your thoughts on my latest project,” he said, turning towards the board. “My field of interest, since I’ve arrived here in the Commonwealth, is the exact cause and process of Ghoulification. I became interested in this field of study when my beautiful wife and I were locked outside of a compound just south of the Commonwealth during a radiation storm, leading to my current state of being. She opted to stay behind while I continued north to do research on the Glowing Sea and radiation itself.” He shot them a smile and Jack slid a little lower in his seat with a quiet huff. “My goal in this project of mine is to find a cure to ‘going feral’ as it’s commonly called.”

Jack scoffed almost as soon as the word ‘feral’ left his lips. “There’s no _cure_ for going feral—and before you suggest it, there’s no cure for becoming a Ghoul either.”

Nick wanted to shut his friend up, before he got them all killed, but Kraus was one step ahead of him, slamming his palm on the tabletop loud enough that Jack jumped a little.

“ _You_ don’t know _anything_ about my research! We’re getting close, Dr. Roberts, and we could use your medical expertise in finishing it,” Kraus argued loudly. Satisfied that neither of his guests were about to interrupt him again, he took a shaky breath and said, “As I was saying. We have made remarkable strides towards figuring out the cause of the loss of sanity in Ghouls. I have invented a serum, if you will, designed to pump certain amounts of radiation into the blood stream to induce Ghoulification in our human subjects, and we also use this serum on our Ghoul subjects to see where the line is.”

Nick and Jack exchanged another glance, and he could see it in Jack’s eyes that he was feeling the exact same way as him. This man was delusional and was torturing the people he’d been kidnapping.

“Human subjects that go Ghoul have have all gone feral at the introduction of 10,000 more rads than it took to turn them Ghoul. Ghoul subjects introduced to the serum have varying degrees of reactions depending on how old they were. Young Ghouls reached feral status after a mere 5,000 extra rads, and some of the pre-war Ghouls I have studied were able to survive upwards of 30,000 more rads before succumbing.”

Kraus reached up to scratch at his head as he considered the numbers on the board. “I cannot find the correlation, no matter how hard I try, but perhaps a fresh set of eyes can help,” he said, turning to smile at Jack hopefully.

Nick might as well not be there, he mused, as much attention as Kraus was paying him. He did have an idea, though, and cut off Jack before he could pick a fight. “Dr. Kraus,” he interrupted, making a guess at the title. When the Ghoul turned to him eagerly, he continued, “Perhaps if you could show us some of the subjects firsthand, we can make a better hypothesis. I mean, numbers are one thing, but viewing the experiment itself could reveal something to—to my colleague and I that you might have missed the first time around.”

Dr. Kraus’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “Yes, yes, of course! Let’s go to the experimentation chamber and I’ll give you the full tour!”

He seemed excited and entirely gullible, Nick noted as he and Jack stood from their seats. This could be either easier or harder than he’s expecting, depending on how they manage to play their cards. As they followed their captor out of the room, Nick could only hope that Kira was alright, because he wasn’t sure when they’d be able to get back to her at this rate. She could handle herself, but being alone in the Wasteland for any amount of time is always a risk and, knowing her, she was probably searching high and low for them right this moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk how i feel about this but ive rewritten this like 17 times and im sick of looking at it so i'm gonna move on now!! i hope it's not awful!
> 
> also i almost named this chapter 'the one with the plot' hhhhh plot is so hard
> 
> anyway please be gentle ive never actually gotten this far in a fic ever i usually stop like four chapters in


	10. Ghost and Ghouls and Geigers (Oh My)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pronunciation Note: "Unnie" is pronounced kind of like "Onii" ;)
> 
> also wtf i come up with the chapter titles on the spot please ignore them

This place was built like a maze, Kira realized after passing by the break room for a third time. Everything looked the same—dingy, rusty, and orange. There were no signs, nothing different about any of the hallways except every now and then when a hallway was full of doors which probably led to bedrooms. She passed a set of stairs at one point, but she hadn’t explored this floor enough to venture onto another.

Every so often, she passed someone else in a funny suit and her heart leapt in her chest, afraid that one of them might have X-ray vision or something and see right through her disguise, but the most any of them ever did was bump shoulders with her almost affectionately. It was unnerving, but it was comforting to know that her height was for once working to her favor. Had she been much taller, they would have seen right through her the second she landed in this place.

Worryingly, Kira’s Geiger counter on her Pip-Boy was still going absolutely crazy as she walked the corridors. She wasn’t sure where the radiation was coming from, or why, but it was unnerving to hear the insistent clicking the more she walked. She tried not to think about it, though, because her anxiety about one thing usually led to anxiety about something else and so on until she was nothing but a trembling mess. She needed to focus and be ready for anything.

Eventually, Kira found a door labeled ‘Authorized Personnel Only’, which in itself was kind of funny because she couldn’t remember the last time she saw a sign like that. Curious, she made sure that no one was around to catch her before pushing open the door and slipping inside.

The entire room, or whatever it was that she stepped into, was pitch black. She almost panicked, it was so dark, when something in her helmet beeped and flickered to life, turning everything green with night-vision.

She was standing in a long hallway, with doors on either side all the way to the end of the hall. There was a door on the opposite side of the hall facing her, and she could just barely make out a sign on that door that said ‘Restricted Access’. She took a few steps towards it, only to have someone or something start banging on the doors on either side of her. Her heart skipped a beat, and for a second she felt like she was about to pass out. Whatever was in those rooms, it definitely wasn’t anything nice.

All of the doors she passed on the way down the hall had the same reaction, and she worried for a minute that someone was going to catch her.

 _Oh well_ , she thought as she came to a stop in front of the door at the end of the hall. _I’ll deal with that if it happens._

The ‘Restricted Access’ door had a label on it that read:

_Subject 10194: Skye_

_Classification: Extremely Valuable, Best Candidate for Success_

_Any tampering with this experiment will result in immediate termination._

_Skye_ , Kira thought, heart leaping in her chest again, but this time because something good was finally happening. If she could get Skye and get out without anyone noticing…

Surprisingly enough, when Kira turned the knob on the door just to see what would happen, it came right open. What a…terrible way to keep someone imprisoned.

Peering cautiously around the side of the door, she was surprised to find the room had light in it. Another beat later, and she realized that the light was, in fact, coming from the person lying on the bed, curled on their side and facing the wall. The description Jack had given them for Skye no longer applied, apparently, as the Ghoul on the dingy mattress was actually a Glowing One.

She almost retreated, a little scared, but then she realized that if this Ghoul _were_ feral like all the other Glowing Ones she’d met, they probably would have attacked her by now. Safe in that thought, she stepped fully into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar just in case it was one of those doors that could only be opened from the outside. (Which would make way more sense, now that she thought about it.)

Her Geiger counter was still flipping out, but she didn’t want to startle Skye (assuming, of course, that this _was_ Skye), so after taking a deep breath, she pulled her helmet off and mentally reminded herself to take a bunch of Rad-Away once they got out of here.

Before she could get close enough to poke her, Skye turned her head slightly and asked, “What the hell do you want?”

Furrowing her eyebrows at the strange sensation in her gut that said that voice was familiar, Kira shook her head and said, “I’m here to take you home.”

Kira saw Skye’s shoulders stiffen before she flipped over completely, glowing eyes wide and—hopeful? Why was she looking at her like—

“Kira? _Unnie_ , is that you?” Skye asked breathlessly, a smile playing on her lips.

Kira blinked. Then took a deep breath, opening her mouth to speak, before shutting it just as quickly as she realized what exactly Skye had just said.

_Unnie._

**_Big Sister._ **

Kira felt the blood drain from her face, and her pulse doubled in speed so quickly that the rushing sound it left in her ears made her dizzy. Her fingertips went numb, and it felt like all the air had been sucked from the room. The room spun out of focus—everything but Skye’s face going blurry in the wake of the adrenaline and shock running through her veins. She couldn’t believe this. Surely, she was mistaken. There was just no way this Ghoul was…

“ _M-Mae?”_

The Ghoul’s face lit up (even more than it already was) and she lurched forward to grab Kira by the shoulders, pulling her down to sit on the bed as she wrapped her arms around Kira in a crushing hug. “ _Kira,_ ” she gasped into Kira’s shoulder. “What are you _doing here_?”

Kira laughed as a few tears slipped down her cheeks, hugging her sister— _oh, god, that’s so good to think_ —back just as hard. “I told you! I’m here to rescue you.”

Mae laughed and pushed back to grasp Kira by the shoulders. “I mean what are you doing here _looking like this_? You don’t look any different than you did 200 years ago.”

Kira shook her head. “That’s an interesting story, but we really need to get out of here before someone catches us.”

Mae nodded, still grinning from ear-to-ear with excitement, and said, “You’re right. What’s the plan?”

“Ah,” Kira hesitated, scratching at the side of her head nervously. “Well, I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve been winging it, mostly.”

Her sister stared at her for a second, then shook her head. “How the hell did you get into the FBI?” she mumbled, looking away. Sighing, she said, “I think I know the way out—they take the horses outside sometimes without teleporting them, so we could probably get out that way. Is anyone else here with you that we need to find before we leave?”

Kira rubbed at the back of her neck. “I don’t actually know. I got separated from Nick and Jack a while ago—they might have been kidnapped, but they also might not have been.”

“Jack’s _here_?” Mae asked sharply, making Kira flinch.

Avoiding her sister's gaze, she sighed, “He insisted on coming with us.”

Mae rolled her eyes. “Of course he did, that great, big idiot. Okay, so assuming that Valentine and Jack _did_ get taken, we have to find them first.”

Kira nodded as she rose to her feet. “Yeah, and we should probably stop whoever this Kraus person is before he can hurt anyone else.”

“True. Alright, I know my way around this place pretty well, so I’ll take the lead, if that’s okay with you,” Mae said, standing as well.

Kira was slightly put out when she noticed that, even with these boots on and her sister being barefoot save for some slippers, Mae was still at least an inch taller than her. As if she could read her mind, Mae flashed Kira a grin and winked as she offered her an arm. “Shall we go, _Unnie_?”

Smiling a little as she put her helmet back on, Kira took Mae’s proffered arm and said, “We shall.”

 

* * *

 

Mae did apparently know her way around the compound, taking confident steps and turns until Kira had no idea where they were and was only following after her sister blindly. It was scarier traversing the labyrinthine halls this time, because this time they had to hide from passing guards. If they caught them, they would probably have to fight their way out.

They ran into a group of them in one hallway, and just barely managed to stay out of sight. Mae mumbled something about another way around, but their victory was short-lived. As soon as they turned around, they found themselves face to face with a guard with a bat.

“Where do you two think you’re goin’?” the guard asked, and Kira could hear the grin in their voice.

“Shit,” was all Kira said before she grabbed Mae’s hand and took off sprinting in the opposite direction.

She didn’t know where she was going at all, but Mae still did, calling out when she needed to turn and which way. The shouting of the people chasing them was getting quieter and Kira let out a little sigh of relief at the thought that maybe they’d lost them.

They slowed down a bit to catch their breath, taking in their surroundings for the first time since they’d started running. The corridor they were in was lighter than the others, with white lights on the floor instead of orange. Curious, Kira looked to her sister for an explanation, but all she did was shrug. So maybe Mae _hadn’t_ really known where they were going.

Kira considered their options for a moment. They could go back, and risk running into a gaggle of angry guards who probably had exactly zero qualms about beating the life out of them. Or, the better option, they could go through this door in front of them and see where it took them. Mae obviously had no idea, and Kira _definitely_ had no idea, but it could be a way out. She glanced at her sister for confirmation, nodding towards the door to indicate her idea.

Mae just shrugged and stepped forward to open the door.

The room they found was odd—it almost looked like some kind of control room. There were computers everywhere, and a great big window covered most of the opposite wall. Her Geiger counter fell silent for the first time since she got into the building.

Carefully, making sure not to step on anything that even sort of looked like it might trigger an alarm, Kira and Mae drifted closer to the window. The sight that met them made them both gasp quietly—in the room below them stood Nick and Jack, both relatively unscathed. Relief flooded through Kira at the sight of them, even though she wasn’t sure how she was going to get to them or get them away from that truly ghastly looking Ghoul—at least they were alive.

Mae pressed a hand against the window and sighed wistfully, before saying, “That’s Dr. Kraus they’re with. I guess he’s giving them a tour or something.”

“What are all those contraptions for?” Kira whispered.

Mae made a face. “Tests.”

Before either of them could say anything else, the door behind them slammed shut a second time, making them both whirl around on the spot.

“Well, well, well, little Lightning Bug. What _are_ we doing all the way down here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aahhhh fINALLY MAE I CAN TALK ABOUT MAE my baby
> 
> also what the heck two chapters in like a day im on a ROLL


	11. Vertigo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whispers im sorry

The ‘experimentation chamber’, as Kraus had called it, was down a flight of stairs and down a long corridor. When he opened the door, Nick noticed that there was something like an observation deck over the top of the main floor, though the glass looked like a two-way mirror more than a window. It was unnerving, but not as much as the contraptions littered around the main floor.

It looked, in all honestly, more like a torture dungeon than any kind of science lab he’d ever seen.

In the corner, there was an area walled in by glass. Several men wearing the weird hazmat suits were walking around in there, working with chemicals in vials—chemicals he could only assume were the ones they were using on their victims.

Around the room, there were all sorts of devices, none of which he really had a name for. They looked like nothing he’d ever seen, and he could only guess at the uses for most of them. Someone was hosing one of them down, washing some kind of greenish residue off of a chair that almost looked like a dentist’s chair with restraints. There was another table that he recognized quite well as an autopsy table, and they hadn’t gotten around to hosing that one down, it seemed, judging by the dark stains on it. Nick felt that same phantom memory in his stomach from earlier, and was thankful once again that he was physically incapable of throwing up all over his own shoes.

Jack was fairing marginally worse than Nick when he looked over at him, his face pale as he took in the gruesome sight around them.

Dr. Kraus seemed oblivious to their discomfort.

“This room is where the magic happens,” he announced proudly. “Each of these devices is designed to test the physical limits of each subject, and test what physical stressors are most likely to cause a Ghoul to go feral.”

He gestured towards the far wall, where a single chain hung from the ceiling. “We start off there, where we make sure that each subject is uncontaminated via being hosed down. From there, we typically inject them with the serum and strap them into the chair and allow the serum to do its job. From there, depending on how conscious the subject is, we subject them to any number of tests around the room until they reach the point of being feral. At that point, we inject them with an antidote I’ve been developing, which is partially made from Rad-Away. We have had no successful trials yet, but I am optimistic that we’re on our way.”

Jack made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat, and Nick couldn’t help but agree with him. This was insane.

Eyes on the men in behind the glassed in area, Jack asked, “What did you say happened to your wife again?”

Kraus took a deep breath and said, “She stayed behind with my employers.”

“Your employers?” Nick prompted. He got the feeling Kraus was hiding some—

“The Enclave, that is. I was a lead researcher on a project studying radiation and its effects on the human body when my wife and I had our unfortunate incident. She didn’t manage to stay sane quite like I did, so they’re keeping her safe until I figure out the cure!” Kraus explained.

“ _That_ explains it, then,” Jack said brightly. When Nick and Kraus both looked at him curiously, he said, “The Enclave is fucking insane, which explains why _you’re_ fucking insane.”

Their tour guide frowned and said, “Well, that’s not very nice.”

Jack looked over and gave Nick a withering look that almost made him want to laugh. Almost, of course.

Kraus apparently got over his hurt feelings rather quickly, as he began to prattle on again. “Many not in the loop with modern scientific processes may look at these instruments as instruments of torture, but _I_ simply call them _effective._ Each of these instruments has brought about excellent results, and I think it’s only enhanced by the chems we’ve been manufacturing on our own, here. We based our formula off of a test done up here, actually, in Boston. Don’t really remember the man’s name—Summer, maybe. Anyway, we—”

He couldn’t hear whatever Kraus said next, because something was very wrong. The world spun wildly for a terrifying moment, and he was afraid something important might have broken somewhere inside—

_Knock knock._

_Who’s knocking?_

_Knock knock knock._

_Go away._

_Knock knock knock knock!_

_Go away, go away, go away—_

_“Nick! If you don’t open this door in the next thirty seconds, so help me_ god _, I will break it down!”_

Kira.

_He didn’t remember getting up off the sofa, or walking to the door, but he blinked and the door was open and he was staring at an absolutely drenched Kira Holloway. She was shivering from the chill of the rain—she wasn’t even wearing a jacket—but her eyes were hard and angry. Through numb lips, Nick just barely managed to ask, “What do you want?”_

_She just blinked at him for a second, eyes roaming over his disheveled appearance for a moment before she returned her gaze to his. “You look like hell.”_

_He laughed a tiny, humorless laugh. “I feel like it.”_

_“I didn’t know,” she said, cutting right to the chase._

_His heart sank and his eyes stung again, for about the fifth time that day. He shook his head and said, “You don’t have to lie to—”_

_She cut him off. “I’m_ not _lying. I would never—Nick, we’ve known each other for_ years _. Do you really think I wouldn’t have let you in on it if I’d known? Do you really think I would have let_ Jenny _—?” She swallowed thickly and shook her head, reaching up to push her wet hair out of her eyes. “Can I come in?”_

_He didn’t really want her to, but he also didn’t want to be alone anymore. With half of a shrug, he stepped aside to let her through. She sighed softly as he closed the door behind her. “I’ll get you a towel,” he said quietly._

_When he returned, she was standing next to the little table in his hallway, holding some papers as she dripped rainwater all over his floor. He wrapped the towel around her shoulders and chafed his hands up and down her arms, maybe wanting to feel that she was real just a little. He didn’t think he was far enough gone to be hallucinating, but he couldn’t be sure._

_“You’re not going to this,” she said after a moment._

_Glancing over her shoulder, he found the information Widmark had given him the day before. Or was it two days ago? “Widmark’s ordered me to—.”_

_“Fuck that,” she interrupted, and it was jarring enough to hear that kind of vulgarity from her lips that he paused. “Widmark’s out of his goddamn mind. This is a scam if I’ve ever seen one.”_

_He furrowed his eyebrows as she handed it to him. He read it over, but he didn’t really see what she meant. “I don’t get it.”_

_“Nick,_ this,” _she tapped the paper, “is not certified, professional psychiatric help._ This _is a new age experiment meant to prey on the weak and stupid. You’re not going to do this—I won’t let you.”_

_He frowned and the numbness he’d been living through for the past few weeks faded a little to make room for annoyance. “Since when are you in charge of me?”_

_“Since you got put on_ suicide watch _at the station,” she said firmly. “I’m actually here to collect your gun, because I offered when I stopped by to see you and you weren’t there and none of the people at your work could be bothered. You’re my_ friend _, Nick. I’m worried about you.”_

_He rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why he wanted to fight her, but maybe it was just nice to feel something other than nothing or sad for once. “I don’t need your pity.”_

_Kira set her jaw and he shrunk back a little. “It’s not_ pity _, asshole. I know what depression looks like. I_ have _it. The only difference is I’ve gotten help and I’m managing it.”_

_He shook his head and took a few steps back towards the wall, unsteady on his feet—how long had it been since he’d last eaten? The stinging in his eyes was worse now and he felt his face crumble as tears burned familiar, hot trails down his cheeks. He was dizzy and he was tired and he didn’t want to do this anymore. Sliding down the wall, he curled in on himself on the tile, buried his face in his arms resting on his drawn up knees and let out a heavy breath._

_His voice was barely recognizable, even to his own ears, as he took a shuddering breath and said, “J-Jenny would have—”_

_He broke off when he felt Kira sit next to him. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and buried her face against his arm. She was still soaking wet, but he didn’t care much—it was just nice to have someone hold him._

_“I_ know _it hurts, Nicky,” she breathed, squeezing his shoulders and rubbing her other hand up and down his upper arm. “I know it does. And I know it feels like you’ll never be happy again, like there’s no end to the misery. But it will get better. I know that sounds like an empty promise,” she laughed a little, “but I’m gonna be here every single step of the way. You’re not alone. You’re going to make it through this and you’re going to make Jenny_ so _proud. You’ve just gotta let me help you, okay?”_

_He was quiet for a long time, not really thinking about anything for a moment as he just let her body heat sink into his skin, felt it sink into his bones. He could feel the chill of the water, too, and for a minute it was all he felt—Kira and the dampness of the rainwater she’d gotten soaked with._

_He considered her offer, and he really did want help. He didn’t like feeling this way and he didn’t want to—to_ die _or anything._

_At length, he murmured, “Okay.”_

_He felt her smile against his shoulder and, miraculously, he felt like smiling a little, too._

“—Nick! Oh god, Nick, don’t—Kira’s gonna kill me. _Please_ wake up, oh god.”

Nick blinked and the world spun back into focus. The first thing he noticed was that he felt _dizzy_ , which was really, really weird because robots didn’t get dizzy. The second thing he noticed was that there were very large hands on his shoulders, and Jack dropping his head in relief, laughing lightly.

“What—What happened?” Nick asked as Jack straightened back up. He saw Kraus watching on with curiosity a few feet away.

Jack shook his head. “I dunno, man. You stopped moving and your eyes went out—I thought you were dead for a good minute or two there. Are you alright?”

Nick didn’t actually know, but he said, “Yeah, I—yeah. I’m fine.”

He could see Jack didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t about to argue that _here,_ of all places, so he just turned back to their self-assigned tour guide. It was disconcerting to see that Kraus actually looked _concerned_. Had he really shut down for a couple minutes? What had happened that would cause a total system crash like—

_BANG!_

He flinched, and his attention was drawn upward, then, towards the observation deck as it sounded like something had slammed into the glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never actually found the holotape addressed to nick 1.0 but someone had the transcript on tumblr and well...it just seemed like such a good opportunity lol


	12. The One with the Cliche

The man standing at the door was short, about the same size as Mae at first glance, and he was stout. His face reminded Kira vaguely of a puffer fish—round, unpleasant, and bloated. He smiled and it didn’t reach his eyes in the slightest. (Why was she remembering _Silence of the Lambs?_ At a time like this? What the hell?) He was dressed in just a lab coat and, as they watched him apprehensively, he popped a pill (or a mint?) into his mouth. He chewed it as he stepped closer, his footsteps slow and calculated, like he knew exactly what they were thinking and knew that there was no easy way for them to escape. Uncomfortable with how little of her peripheral she could see through the damn radiation suit helmet, she pulled it off just as he opened his mouth to speak.

“Lightning Bug, are you really so eager for your next round of testing?” he asked in that same low, smooth tone, threat lacing every word.

Mae swallowed thickly and straightened her back, trying to look confident. “No, Clarence. I’m leaving.”

_What the hell kind of name is_ Clarence _?_ Kira thought dimly through the fog of anxiety that was muddling her brain.

He chuckled and Kira’s stomach turned. “Is that so? Pray tell, how do you plan on doing that? Your little friends down there certainly can’t hear you cry for help all the way up here.” He continued to advance on them, and Kira and Mae began to skirt away around the long desk with computers on it. “This little girl doesn’t look like she can put up much of a fight for you, either. Have you finally started to feel the tickle of insanity?”

Mae seemed to be backing up toward something and, while Kira desperately wanted to look and see what was behind her, she couldn’t take her eyes off of the creepy old man advancing on them.

Another few steps and Kira and Mae were backed up against a desk. Kira looked around the room wildly, trying to calculate how quickly she could reach something she could use as a weapon other than the helmet she’d just dropped to her feet, when she felt Mae nudging something into her hand behind her back. Scissors?

That could work.

Taking a few steadying breaths, she lunged forward, hoping to catch him off guard and go for the jugular. He was faster than her, though, surprisingly, and he ducked out of the way just in time to have her stumbling past him, so off balance that she had to catch herself against the window. Before she could even right herself, he had his arms around Mae and a knife to her throat.

“Stop right there, Ice Pop,” Clarence said pleasantly. He pressed his face against Mae’s cheek and she flinched, leaning away as best she could.

Gritting her teeth and trying to think through the panic in her head, Kira tilted her head a little and asked, “ _Ice Pop_?”

“I know all about you,” he assured her. “The 200-Year-Old Woman—out of time and out of luck. Shaun would have loved to see you.”

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest at her son’s name, maternal instinct fighting to break free from wherever she’d shoved it a long time ago. Just barely keeping herself from snarling, she said, “You let her _go_.” She wasn’t about to give this sleazy man the pleasure of watching her squirm, no matter how much she wanted to ask about her kid.

He smiled a little, and opened his mouth to say something else equally as irritating, when Mae grasped two of his fingers and _pulled_. He gasped and the knife cluttered to the floor at their feet. Before he could regain himself, Mae slung him around by his arm, throwing her weight into it like Kira had shown her so long ago.

Clarence crashed into the window so hard that it cracked under the impact.

Kira could only watch, stunned, as her sister lunged for the knife, grabbing it before Clarence could right himself and dancing away from him to stop at Kira’s side. She held the knife steadily towards him, in case he decided to take a running start at them. Calmly, Mae said, “I’m _leaving_. And you’re going to let me.”

He smiled as he straightened up, reaching into his coat pocket like nothing was wrong and pulling out a syringe full of something clear and unidentifiable. He held it up to the light, squeezed out some of the bubbles, and then focused his gaze right on Kira, who backed up a few more paces.

She was honestly creeped out by the look on his face, which she didn’t think was possible because she was pretty sure she was immune to feeling creeped out by _anything_ after seeing the Commonwealth. Mae held an arm out to keep Kira behind her, eyes still on the advancing mad scientist.

Just as she thought things couldn’t _possibly_ get any worse than being trapped in a room with the man in front of them, the door behind them burst open and in came a group of guards. They were on the sisters before they even had a chance to react at all, and it took three of them to hold Kira in place as Clarence walked calmly over to her.

Positioning the needle over her arm, he said, “This will only sting a little.”

He started to inject whatever it was and she felt the burn for a second before she managed to bring one of her feet up and kick. He fell back and the needle fell with him, the syringe shattering against the concrete.

If Kira wasn’t a tiny, angry ball of muscle, she might not have been able to pull it off, but she somehow managed to throw them all off of her as Clarence stumbled away. She lunged for him, only to be blinded by a bright flash of light. When it dimmed, he was gone, and so were two of the guards. Of the two left, the one closest to Kira pulled a gun on her and managed to get a shot in, the bullet luckily missing anything important as it went through the outside of her left thigh. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rushed forward, bending her attacker’s gun-wielding arm back on itself so that the gun was pointed at their head. She pulled the trigger and they dropped. Grabbing the gun, she rounded on the other guard.

The only one left had his arms around Mae, holding her in a chokehold while she struggled to get free. Kira was beginning to feel dizzy from whatever little bit of the unknown chemical he’d managed to inject her with—hopefully not enough to cause any permanent damage. The room shifted and tilted as she struggled to focus. The pistol in her hand felt warm, the weight familiar. Raising her arm, she tried her best to figure out which of the two men she saw was the real one and tried not to think how familiar this situation was.

**_War._ **

_When Mae was ten, Kira was sixteen._

_They were walking home from school one day, and a man tried to snatch Mae._ Tried _being the keyword._

_The world turned red as Kira stayed still for about half a second before she was giving chase, dropping everything to take a flying leap at the man. She knocked him down and, angry and scared and_ angry _, she hit him until her knuckles were bruised and bloody, until someone pulled her away and returned her to her sobbing baby sister. The policemen were mad, not about the man who tried to kidnap her sister, but because she took matters into her own hands. They looked at her, a teenager with a split lip, bloody hands, eyes full of tears, and a sobbing ten year old latched to her waist, and told her that she should have asked an adult to help._

_She refused medical services when they took them to the police station. She wanted her parents to see what those officers allowed to happen._

_When her parents finally showed up, Kira’s lip had swollen, her hands were throbbing and still covered in dried blood. Mae was sobbing against Kira’s shirt, though she’d calmed a bit since the incident started. Kira’s blood, and probably some of that man’s blood, had left stains on Mae’s shirt._

_Their dad was furious, as expected, but their mom was relieved and proud. She kept their dad from punishing them both, because he somehow believed that they were at fault for Mae almost getting snatched in the middle of the street. Kira wasn’t sure she could have handled another lecture about watching her sister better._

_“Kira, sweetheart, why didn’t you ask for help?” her mom asked, gentle hands tipping her daughter’s face up towards the light to inspect the damage._

_Kira looked her mother in the eye, eyes hard and full of youth and determination, and said, “_ Because it’s my job to protect my baby sister _.”_

**_War never changes._ **

She pulled the trigger, flinching a little. Someone dropped to the floor, and when she opened her eyes, Mae was hunched over and coughing, trying to catch her breath. At her feet, her attacker lay on the floor, a hole in the glass of his helmet directly over where his forehead would be.

Mae stumbled over to her, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezing. “You okay?”

Kira shook her head a little—the world was starting to steady again, even as the wound on her leg began to really throb. “I think so. Are you okay?”

Mae nodded, and then drifted over towards the window, gazing down at where Nick and Jack and Dr. Kraus were gazing up at them in confusion. After a second, Kraus turned back to their friends and smiled warmly as he began to talk once again.

Mae’s voice was steady and even as she said, “Kira, hand me the gun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again im impatient and bad at writing action sequences but we've all gotta practice so. anyway. yeah


	13. Tying Up Loose Ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS H E R E

“Well, now that that’s over,” Kraus said pleasantly, as he turned back to them from where he’d been staring up at the observation deck. There had been some kind of commotion up there—gunshots and the sounds of some kind of skirmish. Nick couldn’t help but think something about _famous last words_ as Kraus began to prattle on again.

In hindsight, Nick didn’t always like being right about most things. Now was one of those times, as _famous last words_ was entirely accurate to describe the next turn of events.

Just as Kraus started talking again, there was another gunshot, the glass of the window shattered and Kraus fell over, dead judging by the hole in the side of his head and the growing puddle of blood beneath it. Through the glass rain, Nick was suddenly glad that he was made of metal. He hadn’t had quite the reflexes to cover his head before the glass hit them, so a few pieces sliced into his synthetic skin. That hurt, of course, but compared to what it meant for Jack (who had been able to cover his face and head), it wasn’t bad. Jack and Nick looked at each other, before looking back up at the observation deck. There was a glowing Ghoul with a pistol and—oh, god, _Kira._ He was caught up for a second in the wave of relief that washed over him until he noticed that she was looking down at her own bloody hand.

“ _Eat your heart out, asshole!_ ” the Ghoul shouted, lowering the gun and looking down at them. “Jack? You okay?”

“ _Skye_?” Jack took a few halting steps towards her. “Hell, are you alright? Does that hurt?”

She shook her head, face tight, as Kira leaned heavily on her shoulder, eyelids drooping in exhaustion. “I’m fine, but Kira’s been shot. Hurry and get up here, okay? I’m gonna try and stop the bleeding,” Skye said, already guiding Kira backwards, towards a table and away from the broken window.

Nick still had his eyes locked on his—on Kira, when Jack barked, “Where in the hell do _you_ _two_ think you’re going?”

There was a clatter of something falling to the floor as Nick redirected his attention away from the women on the platform above them. He found that the two people behind the glass wall were standing with their hands well above their heads, the universal sign of surrender, having dropped whatever they’d been holding. They exchanged a look and the taller one said, “Honestly, we hate working here. They kidnapped us just outside of the Capital Wasteland and we’ve just been working for them to avoid getting killed or sold.”

The shorter one nodded furiously. “Yeah! My name is Joanna and this is Trevor and please don’t kill us.”

There was a beat of unsure silence before Nick broke it by asking, “Do either of you know how to get up there?”

They both nodded, but it was the tall one, Trevor, that answered. “Yes, I’ve been up there a few times. I also know where they took your bags.”

Nick looked to Jack to see what he thought, and after a moment of thought, he shrugged and nodded. “Alright, but no funny business, you understand?” Jack asked, already heading back the way they came in.

The girl, Joanna, laughed lightly. “Are you kidding? You’re like three times my size—I wouldn’t take you on with anything less than a missile launcher.”

“Hurry and get up here! I don’t know how well I’ll be able to do this,” Skye warned as they left the room.

They didn’t need to be told twice.

 

* * *

_“Hurry and get up here,”_ turned out to be a hell of a lot harder than Nick had expected.

The place was still a sprawling mess of corridors, and though Nick had memorized the path from where they’d started to the torture room, it didn’t help any when they had to go and figure out how to get to the observation deck. Their newest allies didn’t really seem to know where they were going either, though one of them insisted that he’d been in that room before. They took a lot of rights, which confirmed to Nick that neither of them really knew where they were going, as it was a classic trick to get out of a maze by keeping your hand on the right wall.

At some point, they reached a room where the door was slightly ajar. Trevor stopped them and said, “This is where your bags are, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh, good, we need all the stimpaks and RadAway we can find,” Jack sighed.

Nick didn’t like this pit stop one bit, anxious to get to his girl before it was too late. He didn’t trust himself to find his way around on his own, though, and they really couldn’t afford to dawdle at a time like this should they get separated from each other.

The room they walked into was tiny. One half of the room was dedicated to chems—he mostly saw Jet inhalers and Psycho syringes. The other half was full of guns, ammo, and grenades. There was door on that side of the room, too, and one of their new allies produced a key from their pocket. While they went rifling through the closet, he and Jack wandered over to the gun racks to try and find some of their weapons, or at least something they could use should their deal with these people in suits go south. Nick found his own pistol rather quickly, and several of their weapons followed, thankfully.

“Uh, we might have a slight problem,” came a muffled voice from the closet.

“What’s that?” Jack asked, stepping away from the shelf of weapons.

Joanna stepped out of the closet, holding Jack’s bag open, and said, “It—well you’ve got about three stimpaks left in this thing. I guess the Slavers took off with them or—or something. There’s also not very much Med-X left, but there’s a bunch of Rad-X and RadAway at least.”

“Oh, god, really? That’s—let’s hope none of us get injured on the way out of here, because Kira is probably going to need all three of those stimpaks.”

There was beat of uncomfortable silence before Nick cleared his throat and said, “We should probably get moving. The longer we’re here, the more blood Kira loses.”

There was a murmur of agreement around the room, and then they were off again. The hallways didn’t get any easier to navigate, but a few more right turns and they found a hallway with white lights along the floor instead of orange. Trevor bounced a little on his toes as he pointed towards the door at the end of the hall and said, “That’s it!”

Nick and Jack were both off before anyone else could say another word, desperate to get to their girls. Jack reached the door first, long legs pushing him across the distance in a few strides. When he pushed the door open, Nick was surprised to see him raise his arms in surrender. As he caught up, he just managed to catch Skye lowering a gun in relief.

“It’s about time,” she sighed. “She’s starting to lose consciousness.”

Jack didn’t say anything as he crossed the room to them, already pulling out stimpaks with Nick close on his heels. Skye moved to get out of Jack’s way, when Kira reached out desperately, bloody hands struggling to find purchase on Skye’s arm. “ _Mae_ ,” she gasped, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Please.”

_Mae?_

Skye shook her head and said, “Kira, you’ve probably already got radiation poisoning—”

“I don’t _care_. Don’t leave me.”

“Sis, I’m not going very far away. You _have_ to let Jack stop the bleeding.”

Jack interrupted them as he dropped to his knees beside Kira’s wounded leg. “Sis?” he repeated, brows furrowing as she glanced between the two women in confusion.

Skye just waved a hand dismissively at him and said, “Later,” as she pulled out of Kira’s grasp.

Kira’s breath hitched as Jack began to prod gently at the wound, assessing the damage. She hissed when Jack hit a particularly painful spot and reached out with a shaky, “ _Nick_.”

He was by her side in an instant, taking her hand in his good one and squeezing gently. She pulled him closer, burying her face against his shoulder, hand tight around his. He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand, leaning into her. He hated that she was in pain, hated that he hadn’t been there to prevent this.

“ _Fucking_ —why aren’t they _working_?” Jack cursed.

“What?” was out of Nick’s mouth before he had entirely processed what Jack had said. The panic was rising again as he continued, “What do you mean they’re _not working_?”

Jack growled under his breath, rummaging through his bag, looking for something in particular. “Her—Her blood’s too thin, I think. It’s not clotting like it should be. I don’t even know why she’s bleeding this much—I don’t think the bullet severed any major arteries. I mean, I _know_ it didn’t because she’d be dead. We’re going to have to cauterize it.”

“We’re going to have to _what_?” Kira hissed, voice high and tight.

Jack made a face. “I’ll give you Med-X first, but…Joanna, can you plug this in? This electrocauter is old, but it works. I’ve been taking care of it myself, alright, Kira? It’s in working condition and one of the few things the Slavers didn’t make off with.” He took a deep breath as he waited for the machine to heat up. “Here comes the Med-X,” he warned just before he injected her with the large syringe. Kira flinched a little, then went still again. “You might not wanna look, alright? Here we go. Three, two, one—”

Kira made a sort of strangled sound in the back of her throat as the instrument touched her wound, hand tightening around Nick’s again where it had gone limp. Jack didn’t stop, bending her knee to reach the other side of the wound before stopping. He did look vaguely concerned though as he asked, “Did that hurt you?”

She shook her head after a moment of thought. “Not—not really. It just felt really warm and kind of odd.”

Jack nodded and began to wrap a bandage around her thigh. “Nick, what’s her Geiger counter say?”

Nick glanced down at the screen of her Pip-Boy and flinched. “It’s not looking good, Doc, but RadAway wouldn’t do any good in here, would it?”

Sighing heavily, Jack hung his head and said, “No. We need to get her out of her and away from this place as quickly as we can. Do any of you know the way out?”

Joanna and Trevor shook their heads, but Skye nodded. “They have a separate entrance for the horses. We can get out through the stable area.”

“And you know where that is, how?” asked Joanna.

Skye rolled her eyes. “First week they had me here, he didn’t have enough of his little serum to go around, so they had me on stable duty. If we get moving _now,_ we’ll probably be out of here in less than half an hour.”

No one argued, tired and ready to be finished with this whole thing, honestly. Nick and Jack helped Kira up onto her feet. She was numb now, so her leg didn’t bother her as she tried to steady on her feet, but she’d lost a lot of blood so she was pretty lightheaded. Not to mention, the radiation sickness would be setting in any second now. He knew better than to be worried about the possibility of Kira turning into a Ghoul—an hour and a half around thick radiation wasn’t near enough to do anything. The radiation here was bad, but it was nothing compared to The Glowing Sea, and even then it was possible to survive being exposed to that much radiation with enough treatment.

The trip through the corridors was much shorter this time, working off of several people’s memories of the twisting passageways until they reached the place where Jack and Nick had first entered the compound. Skye led them on past that, and once they entered the stables, everyone seemed to relax a bit.

Nick didn’t dawdle in the stables like the others did (he heard them debating about what to do with the horses—leave them, release them, or bring them along), eager to get Kira outside and away from the radiation. It was a physical sort of relief that he felt when the incessant clicking of Kira’s Geiger counter died down the farther from the building they got.

Once the clicking had died down completely, they paused, and Nick noticed Kira was leaning on him really heavily—in fact, he was supporting most of her weight at this point. “Hey, doll? Are you alright?”

She groaned softly. “‘M really dizzy, Nicky,” she slurred.

 _Oh, god._ Carefully, he helped her to the ground, propping her up against part of wall and rummaging through the backpack of supplies Jack had handed him on their way out. He would have asked Jack about this before going ahead with it, but when he looked back up he noticed that they seemed to be loading up the horses with bags of supplies from inside the compound. He’d have to do something to help her hold on until the doctor could see her again.

He pulled out a bag of RadAway and hooked her up with an IV. She seemed to drift off after a few moments, her head falling softly on his shoulder where he’d sat beside her, her eyes falling shut as she let the medicine work its magic. He sighed quietly and pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he settled in, holding the bag of RadAway up to create a steady drip.

He would let her rest as the others got everything in order—she was the only one that was genuinely sick, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have N O idea how hard this was to write lol. Sorry for the delay, but Nick had absolutely no plans to cooperate with me this entire time. Next chapter shouldn't take as long because I can feel the writer's block melting away as we speak. 
> 
> I honestly don't know how I feel about this chapter but I'm pretty sure I rewrote it 20 times in variously similar ways, sO. Lmao.


	14. Dream a Little Dream of Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *that gif of elmo with the fires of hell blazing behind him*

Kira didn’t remember much of their escape from the radioactive compound, in truth.

She remembered Jack having to cauterize her leg wound, mostly because that was one of the weirdest sensations she’d ever experienced, and she vaguely remembered being half-carried out of the place by Nick, but aside from that it was a blur. She remembered him hooking her up to an IV drip of RadAway while the others were still clearing out the compound of useful things, but she passed out after that, and when she woke up, she was zipped up in a hazmat suit and riding on one of the horses with Mae.

The trip back to Sanctuary was slow-going.

They stopped at a few settlements on the way to check in with people who were missing loved ones—there had been no other survivors from the Commonwealth, unfortunately, so every stop broke her heart a little bit more. Joanna and Trevor (she’s pretty sure those were their names), took off after the second settlement, planning to take a few of the horses back south in hopes of finding their families again.

On top of that, her leg was healing awfully for no real reason. Jack couldn’t figure it out, because it didn’t seem like the bullet was poisoned or something ridiculous like that, but even after a few more stimpaks, it was still really sore and difficult to walk on.

“I wouldn’t be too terribly worried about it,” he said as they made camp for the night. They weren’t far from Sanctuary now, but they weren’t in any rush. They still needed to figure out what to do with the horses, after all, and Kira still wasn’t in tip-top shape, so traveling at night wasn’t ideal anyway. “Your body was really weak when we first tried healing it due to blood loss and radiation—I imagine it’s still struggling to catch up. Plus, I know you said you got…injected with something, so whatever that was might also be affecting the healing process.”

And that was all he said about it. That answer seemed kind of iffy to her, but without proper hospitals and supplies that would be needed to actually try and figure out what the hell was up, it’s not like there was much any of them could do to get to the bottom of it. He’d at least promised to help her keep an eye on it, but she wasn’t showing symptoms of anything else, so there was no _real_ reason to worry at the moment—according to him, at least. He was a professional, though, and she trusted his judgement, so she tried not to let it get to her.

Besides, as long as she was still breathing, it couldn’t have been that bad, right?

Kira made a face as she stared up at the night sky. That wasn’t exactly a comforting thought to have in the middle of the night.

“Pretty sure you should be sleeping, sweetheart,” came Nick’s quiet voice as he walked over to her. He was technically taking watch, and Jack and Mae were already asleep, but Kira found she’d had enough of sleeping for the past few days.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and watched as he lowered himself to sit beside her. “Think I’ve had my fill of sleeping for a while,” she said absently, turning back to stargazing.

“You’re healing. You should be resting,” he argued gently.

She sighed slowly. “Yeah, I know. My leg is kind of aching, though, on top of my being very awake.”

“I’m sure we have some Med-X left if you need it.”

“I probably do,” she conceded, “but I hate needles and it’s just sort of achy pain. I’m not about to pass out or anything.”

Nick shook his head with a laugh and asked, “You want _me_ to do it?”

Kira smiled a little and said, “No, I do not.”

“You sure?”

She hummed and said, “I’m a grown-up, Nicky. I can handle a little pain.” She paused as an idea flickered to life in her head. Flashing him a grin, she added, “You can kiss it better, though, if you want.”

She had expected him to get flustered, but all he did was smirk and lean in a little to stage-whisper, “You don’t wanna be caught smooching on a synth, doll. It wouldn’t end well.”

Raising her eyebrows, Kira turned to glance over her shoulder at where Jack and Mae were fast asleep in their sleeping bags. Glancing down at her Pip-Boy for the time as she turned back forward, she shrugged a little and asked, “Who’s gonna see? Everyone is asleep.”

Nick smiled a little, avoiding her eyes. “Funny,” he said dryly.

 _Of course_ , she thought, annoyed, frowning. _Of course he doesn’t recognize my blatant invitation. Maybe if I scream, ‘Please, kiss me,’ he’ll figure it out._ She watched his profile for a moment, out of the corner of her eye, when her gaze caught on his tie where it lay loose around his neck. She contemplated it for a minute and a mischievous idea began to form in her mind. Sighing heavily, she said, “Hey, actually, would you mind getting some Med-X for me? Please?”

She imagined, if he had the ability, he would have raised an eyebrow at her, but he just smiled and said, “Sure thing.”

Kira wondered, as he returned with a syringe in hand, if he had any idea what she was up to. He was a detective, but he was also one of the most clueless people she’d ever known. He knelt in front of her with a tiny sigh. “Do you want me to count or would you rather I just get it over with?” he asked, golden eyes rising to hers from where they’d been focused on her leg.

She shrugged. “Get it over with, I guess.”

She wince a little when she felt the prick of the needle, but then it was gone as her leg went numb. It felt better, certainly, but that wasn’t really what she cared about. This was her chance.

As Nick leaned over her, before he could move away again, she reached up, grabbed him by the tie, and pulled him down so that his lips met hers.

For a hot second, she got the sense that Nick was frightened, the way he went completely still against her. She pulled back a little to look at his face, to read his response, maybe to apologize, but when she looked up his glowing eyes were focused on her lips. He opened his mouth and took a tiny breath like he was going to say something, and for a moment she was afraid he was about to tell her off. He hesitated, eyes still on her mouth, before he leaned in and kissed her again.

It was a strange feeling, and he wasn’t quite like anybody else she’d ever kissed, but it wasn’t _wrong_. In fact, it felt so inexplicably _right_ , in every way, and it was all she could do to keep from throwing herself at him completely. Her arms slid up around his neck and she pulled him closer, thrilling in the way he hummed softly against her lips. His bare hand moved away from her thigh, to avoid doing anything to her injury, but his good hand landed on her other thigh as if to steady himself, sending shivers up and down her spine.

Kira couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this good. This was everything a first kiss was supposed to be—slow and sweet and tender, full of promise. With warmth and butterflies blooming in her stomach, she smiled into the kiss, giggling when he smiled a little, too.

She released her hold on him after another minute or two, trying not to overwhelm him and scare him off. Cupping the sides of his face, feeling the exposed metal of his jaw under her fingertips, she pulled away slowly, lingering as long as possible, keeping her eyes closed to keep from breaking the spell too soon. Despite the obvious metal bits and the way his skin was made of some sort of skin-textured plastic that didn’t really produce any heat, there wasn’t a single part of her that worried that he wasn’t “real”. This was real and she was right exactly where she wanted to be.

When she finally opened her eyes, his were still closed and she grinned, stroking her thumbs across his cheeks. After another beat, he opened his eyes and she could have sworn he looked at least a little bit dazed.

He smiled a little. “Never had Med-X incite a reaction quite like that before,” he murmured, and his voice so low and rough that she could feel it in her chest.

She laughed a little, letting her hands drop back to her lap. “Maybe it’s not the Med-X,” she replied with a wink.

Kira felt her stomach do a somersault or three when Nick’s eyes dropped back to her mouth and he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth for a moment. She felt a little lightheaded, actually, and she—

“You should probably get some rest,” he said at length, interrupting her thoughts. If it weren’t for the softness in his gaze and the slow, heavy relaxation the Med-X was pumping through her veins, she might have thought he was rejecting her. He offered her a slightly lopsided smile. “We’re leaving bright and early in the morning.”

With a suddenly very dry mouth, all Kira could do was nod and mumble, “Yeah, alright.”

It wasn’t quite what she would call a walk of shame, returning to her sleeping bag—not with the way she could feel his gaze burning a hole in her back as she went. When she settled down, she flashed him one last smile before turning away from him. If she looked at him for much longer, she might be tempted to start back up where they left off.

 _Well_ , she thought just as she began to drift off, _at least he kissed me back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)
> 
> check out this cool [fanart](http://kingofthezombies.tumblr.com/post/141587487308/kaitybot-art-gift-for-kingofthezombies-their) that [babebot](http://babebot.tumblr.com) drew me of Mae and Jack!!!
> 
> also the title of this chapter doesnt really mean anything its just the song i was listening to the whole time i was writing it


	15. There and Back Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the beginning part of this chapter is titled The Freak Out™

Nick touched his still tingling lips with numb fingers, stunned. Never mind the fact that he felt inexplicably warm, and he felt something in his stomach almost like butterflies when he really shouldn’t be. He felt like he was stuck in some sort of feedback loop, his sensors going into overdrive, overwhelmed. He couldn’t stop reliving the moment—could still feel the warm press of her lips against his. Could still feel her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, closer. His mind was racing a mile a minute, running through algorithms and data, trying to find an explanation as to what the _hell_ just happened. 

After a few more minutes, Nick became aware that he was still grinning like an idiot. He tried to relax his face, tried to _stop_ before someone woke up and noticed, but he really couldn’t help it. He was starting to think that he’d never be able to make a move—he was honestly being a bit of a coward about it. But now he didn’t have to make the first move, because she did it for him.

He felt fourteen years old again, with a puppy love sort of crush on that pretty senior whose name he’d long forgotten. The only difference this time was Kira was _not_ like that girl from his previous life, so to speak. She was actually into him, if the kiss square on the lips meant anything. And he was pretty sure it meant something, because Kira didn’t seem the kind of person to go around kissing people on the mouth just because she could. Besides, if that were the case, he was also pretty sure that he’d have noticed.

_Pretty_ sure.

Pretty…sure…

The more he thought about it, actually, he realized he still wasn’t quite sure that Kira wasn’t still just harboring feelings for the other Nick Valentine. He still wasn’t sure that she—that she had feelings for synth Nick, and it wasn’t just some sort of hangover from her feelings for human Nick.

Mood efficiently soured, Nick settled down a little further where he was sitting and returned to watch duty, forcing his mind to go blank because he wasn’t in the mood to ruminate tonight.

 

* * *

 

Nick was about to overheat, and it wasn’t because of the warm weather.

Every time he glanced at Kira, she was smiling. While she cited the nice weather and promise of being able to sleep in her own bed as the reason behind her good mood, it didn’t change the fact that if he met her gaze, her smile stretched a little wider, eyes brightening in what could only be described as pure, untamed joy. He didn’t have a heart to skip a beat, but he swore something in his chest stuttered every single time. It was getting increasingly more difficult for him to fight back the urge to smile, and ducking his head to try and hide it was too obvious.

Of course, by the knowing looks Jack kept giving him, it was apparently really obvious anyway that something had happened in the last twelve hours to set both of them into such a good mood.

If he could blush, he’d probably be redder than Hancock’s coat.

Kira and Sk— _Mae_ laughed a lot on the way home, and he and Jack both seemed to be similarly smitten with the sound of it, watching them walk together a few feet in front of them with faint smiles on their faces. Nick realized he hadn’t actually heard Kira genuinely laugh, full and happy and loud. It was a nice sound, and he was intensely glad that they found Mae more or less in one piece. Seeing her like this, reminiscing the good old days with her sister, laughing at funny stories like not a day had passed—he was a goner.

It was late in the day when they finally reached Red Rocket, the sun hanging low on the horizon. Kira was starting to limp a little, soreness returning after the (pretty large) dose of Med-X she’d taken earlier began to wear off. He thought about offering his shoulder for her to lean on, but Mae was a step ahead of him, and wrapped an arm around her sister before she could ask. 

Jack and Nick hung back a little as they continued on toward Sanctuary. Careful to be quiet, Nick asked, “Is it okay for them to be that close?”

“Huh?” Jack jumped a little, startled, though he shook it off just as quick. “Oh, yeah. I’ve got Kira on a very strict regimen of Rad-X and if she needs it, we’ve got plenty of RadAway. She’ll be fine.”

“Good.”

Jack actually smirked at him a little, waggling his nonexistent eyebrows despite the frown on Nick’s face. “Worried about your girl, Detective?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet because he wasn’t out to actually cause a scene.

Nick just rolled his eyes, intent on ignoring him, though he couldn’t help but laugh when the horse Jack was leading reared a little and almost head-butted him. 

“Not a word, Tin Man,” Jack growled as he stopped to steady the horse.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nick assured him. 

They fell quiet again until they reached Sanctuary, walking through the gate and ignoring the curious looks they got. He wasn’t sure whether the settlers were more concerned with the horse (which Kira had dubbed _Spooky_ on their way back) or with Kira’s sister, who did look a little out of place. He didn’t dwell on it, because whichever it was, neither Kira nor Mae seemed to give a damn. Mae introduced herself to the people in the nearby vicinity, careful not to actually touch anyone, before Kira sighed and started to tug her sister towards her house.

“Hope you boys don’t mind, I’m gonna have to confiscate my sister for the night,” Kira called over her shoulder.

Jack handed off Spooky to one of the farmers and sighed, grabbing his bag and following after them. “Let me give you some Med-X before you settle in, at least.”

Nick watched the three of them disappear into the house for a moment, before continuing on down the street. He took his time, and by the time he reached the house foundation where he usually came to sit (someone had apparently set up some picnic tables on it while they were away), the sun was almost completely below the horizon. He sighed heavily, bringing a cigarette to his lips and lighting it just to give himself something to do. 

He could have gone to visit with people, sure, but he wasn’t in the mood. When was he ever, honestly? Outside of trying to get work and responding to rude comments, he wasn’t exactly a Chatty Kathy. Trying to talk to new people ended uncomfortably more often than not anyway. 

Of course, he didn’t mind the people in Sanctuary (most of them, anyway), but he also didn’t consider any of them friends. He was perfectly content to sit and—

Nick made a face and looked back out over the water. He needed to stop beating around the bush.

For the first time in his life, he actually wished he could talk to Piper, who seemed to be one of Kira’s absolute best friends. (At least, they always seemed to be really excited to see each other when they were actually in Diamond City.) Maybe she’d have known what to do about all this—plus, she was a woman, and could tell him what he really needed to do to win a woman’s affections. He had memories, sure, but they weren’t really very clear, and he certainly had no practice since he woke up in that garbage heap. Irma liked to flirt with him, and he had the words down, sure, but actually initiating something? Starting a relationship and making it work? 

He had no idea. He didn’t even have the slightest clue where to start.

Of course—Of course, he could always just pick up where she left off. That kiss was still buzzing around in the back of his mind like an angry swarm of bees. With his memory, there was no way he’d be able to move on without solving this—without talking to her about it. And it wasn’t like he didn’t want her, because of course he did. He did have eyes, and he’d be concerned if he _didn’t_ want her. Maybe not in the _carnal_ way, no, because he didn’t exactly have the, ah, _parts_ for that, but there was definitely a big part of him that wanted to be close to her.

He sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands.

Even now, he could still feel her arms snaking around his neck, pulling him closer. He could still remember the feeling of her soft, soft lips moving against his, the tickle of her breath against his synthetic skin. The feel of her smile pressed against his mouth…

Nick let out a huff, rubbing at his face as roughly as he dared without damaging anything. 

There was no avoiding it. He had it for her. He had it _bad_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ^_^


	16. Sister, Sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've had this chapter written like since chapter 7

“I got away with a full head of hair, you know, after it all happened,” Mae sighed, disappointment heavy in her voice as she looked at her new (new? New new?) face in the handheld mirror Kira kept on her dresser. “And now it’s all gone.” She turned her head this way and that and made a face. “It could be worse, I guess.”

Kira hugged a pillow to her chest and tilted her head. “Could it?”

Mae snorted and stood to put the mirror back. “No.” She sighed as she fell back onto the bed, jostling the mattress and Kira’s leg which was thankfully numb for the night after Jack had _insisted_ (read: held her down) that she take some Med-X to help her sleep.

Grinning wickedly, Kira said, “Well, _I_ think you’re positively—”

“Oh, _don’t_ —!”

“— _glowing._ ”

Mae groaned and Kira laughed and it felt like she was home, really home, for the first time since she’d woken up in this new world. Mae couldn’t help but laugh as well, as much as she might have despised puns, Kira knew she was just as glad to be here as she was.

“I forgot how much of a total loser you are,” Mae said seriously, smile slipping from her lips, eyes on the ceiling, still lying on the bed.

“You love me.”

That made Mae smile again as she turned her head to look at her big sister. “Yeah, unfortunately.”

Kira rolled her eyes. “If I could kick you, I would.”

“I guess it’s a good thing your tiny legs can’t reach me all the way down here then,” Mae laughed, though she broke off spluttering when Kira smacked her in the face with her pillow. “Still touchy about your height, Sis?”

“Well, you haven’t made it any better, bringing Tall, Dark, and British into my life,” Kira reminded her, pulling her pillow back to her chest. “How tall is Jack? 6’4”? 6’5”?”

“6’5”,” Mae confirmed lightly.

Kira hummed thoughtfully, pulling her good leg up to rest her chin on her knee. “Is it true, what they say about tall men? Like, Nate was tall, but he wasn’t _tall_ , you know, so I was just wonder—”

Mae flushed spectacularly, her cheeks glowing so much they almost looked white, and buried her face in her hands. “ _Kirraa,”_ she groaned. “Stop, oh my god. Why do you even care? You’re ace!”

Kira grinned at her sister innocently. “Because I knew you would react like that.”

“I hate you.”

Kira laughed and her face softened as she considered her sister. “Does he treat you right, Mae?”

Her little sister sat up then and shifted so she was sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the bed. She smiled, and Kira wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her sister smile quite like that. She nodded and said, “Yeah, he—he treats me better than anyone I’ve ever been with. He makes me so happy that sometimes I think I’m gonna wake up and it’ll have all been one huge clusterfuck of a dream and…and he’ll be gone and I’ll be stuck with Jaxton.” She sighed and ran a hand over her head. “I know you didn’t like him and I didn’t know why, then, but I do now. He wasn’t good for me.”

Kira nodded understandingly. “You had to figure it out for yourself.”

“ _Do_ you like Jack?” Mae asked, eyes on the wall beside Kira’s head. Mae would never say it, and Kira would never make her, but even before the world ended, she knew her sister really took Kira’s opinions to heart. They’d always been close—as much as their parents worked, they’d had no choice, but it was a nice sort of closeness. Mae was Kira’s best friend, and Kira thought that maybe she might be Mae’s best friend, too.

“Yeah,” she said after a minute. “Yeah, I like him a lot. I think he’s good for you.”

Mae smiled and picked at a thread on the blanket. The room fell quiet for a moment, the soft sounds of the radio on Kira’s dresser filling the silence in a comfortable way. It was nice, Kira thought, that she still had the opportunity to sit with her sister like this, after over 200 years of war and bloodshed and ruin. Better than nice, even. Glorious. Amazing. Wonderful. There weren’t enough words in any language to describe it.

“What about you?” Mae asked suddenly. “You got any gentlemen callers?”

Kira rolled her eyes at the devious grin on her sister’s face. “Not exactly.”

Her sister tilted her head. “Not even Nick?”

Kira scoffed. “Nah, I don’t think that train is ever leaving the station, if you know what I mean.”

Mae laughed lightly. “Why not?”

“Because,” Kira sighed, “I’ve literally kissed him and I’m fairly positive he’s yet to actually realize I’m being serious.”

“And, he’s not, you know, the same Nick Valentine that you worked with before, is he? I mean, I don’t know why he wouldn’t be, but—” Mae broke off with a shrug.

Kira shook her head. “No, he’s not. He’s a different person—he might have Nick’s mannerisms and some of his memories, but he’s not…he’s not the _same_ you know? There are differences and I don’t really know what they are, exactly, but they’re there. Does that make sense?”

Mae was nodding emphatically as she replied, “Not a lick.”

“Yeah,” Kira laughed, “I guess not. At the very least, _he_ considers himself a different person.”

“Well, he’s also a robot,” Mae added helpfully.

“He’s not a _robot_. He’s a _synth_ and he’s a definitely sentient one at that,” Kira argued, frowning a little. She sighed and said, “Well, I’m asexual anyway, so that doesn’t matter much anyhow.” Shaking her head, she settled back against her pillows and said, “Enough about boys! I have other questions.”

“And I have other answers,” her sister said simply, smiling again.

“Okay, first thing’s first—why _‘Skye’_?”

Mae shrugged. “That happened not all that long ago, actually. I just decided one night that I wanted to be someone else, and I was looking at the sky and I thought about how much I loved it because it was still the same after all this time—still _there_ , anyway. And then I thought, _Hey, I’m still here and I love myself, too._ And voila! _Skye_.”

Kira nodded. That was a lot shorter of an explanation than she’d been expecting, though she wasn’t really sure why. She shrugged it off after another second.

“You don’t have to answer this question, just so you know,” Kira started seriously. Mae frowned as she continued. “I was just wondering what—what you remembered about the war and what it was like, because all I remember is being frozen and waking up 200 years later.”

Her sister’s face fell a little and she pointed at the spot next to Kira on the bed. “Mind if I lay down a bit? I’m kinda tired from the past few weeks.”

Kira grinned and put the pillow in her arms back down beside her, patting the mattress as she shimmied down the bed to get into a semi-comfortable laying position. Mae followed suit, snuggling up under the blankets and facing her sister. She smiled a little as she warned, “It’s a bit of a long story.”

Tapping gently on her injured leg, Kira grinned and said, “I got plenty of time.”

Mae tilted her head in acknowledgment and turned to look up at the ceiling, bringing her hands up to play with a button on her shirt. “It was—I was on the way to meet Mom and Dad and Jaxton for lunch, and I was gonna drop Maya off on the way, when the radio started saying all this stuff about bombs and,” she paused to take a deep breath, shaking her head. “I didn’t know what to do. Maya was the one that made me pull over and, after grabbing as much of my junk out of the car as we could, we ran and took cover in the sewers. We weren’t the only people that made it in there, but—we heard the bomb go off. Felt it shake the earth around us. We thought the sewers were gonna cave in for a hot minute.”

She swallowed thickly. “Some city workers had been stocking up in the sewers for a long time, apparently, because there was plenty of food to last us a while. We couldn’t hear much from outside, though neither of us really wanted to. I can only imagine the chaos. Anyway, we stayed down there for probably a month or two. Didn’t really keep track. Before either of us were really ready to leave, this boy came up to us, dressed in military gear that looked like it’d been through hell and back. He’d come from the other side of the sewers, apparently—a different entrance. Said his name was Tony and that we were the first people he’d seen that didn’t look ready to cut anyone’s throat for rations.”

Mae smiled a little at the memory. “I don’t think either of us would have made it much longer without Tony. Once he talked us into leaving—which took a _lot_ of effort—once he convinced us to come with him, he helped us find somewhere safe to hide out. Taught us all about how to handle ourselves—how to use knives, guns, our hands, whatever we had readily available to practice with. Once we were all fairly competent, we started drifting around the Commonwealth, just…trying to see what was left.”

She turned to look at Kira then, and Kira thought she might have seen a tear slide down onto the pillow. “I looked for you, at first. I thought—I dunno, maybe you’d made it, too, but when I didn’t find Mom or Dad…I guess I gave up, a little. I vaguely remembered hearing about the Vault program, but how was I supposed to know if you’d gotten into that?” She laughed a little. “It was too good to be true.”

“Back to the story, I guess. It wasn’t so bad, just the three of us, until we noticed that our hair was falling out. Maya noticed first, and then Tony. I was lucky and they poked fun at me for it. Then our skin started to burn and itch. I passed out a lot, during that stage. It hurt so bad, but if I could sleep through any of it, it helped. That was when things started falling off. My nose went first—and, fuck, was _that_ scary—then Tony’s, then Maya’s. We didn’t understand, at first, but the more we wandered, the more we noticed other people looking like us.”

“Of course, there were also the people that got hit and burnt to a crisp immediately. We didn’t have a word for them when we first ran into them, other than, _holy shit is that a zombie_. We called ourselves that for a while—made jokes about being _the walking dead_. It made it hurt less, now that I think about it. We didn’t actually notice that we weren’t aging for a long, long time. The world was already starting to settle out again when someone in Diamond City said it was the 20 year anniversary of the beginning of the Great War.”

Kira gaped and Mae chuckled lightly. “You guys didn’t know you weren’t aging for _twenty years_?”

Mae shrugged. “It sounds unbelievable, but without real seasons, the days and weeks just kind of blurred together. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen to you?”

Kira shut her mouth then and laughed. She had noticed that sometimes she lost three or four days, but she’d just attributed it to her unchecked mental illnesses that no longer had medication to chill them out.

Her sister grinned knowingly at her. “Well, I guess it helped that we don’t actually sleep as much as humans do, so we were also just staying up for days on end. The time passes quickly when you do stuff like that.”

“How’d you do it?” Kira interrupted abruptly. Mae glanced at her, and Kira said, “How’d you keep going for so long? I don’t—I don’t know that I could have.”

Mae pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, Maya and Tony were around for a good 150 years, give or take, until they decided they were going to backpack it to California, because they were both from San Diego and they wanted to see it. It’d also gotten a little weird once they became a couple and I became the permanent third wheel.” She giggled. “But, other than that, you know, I think I kept going because of you.”

She waited for Mae to explain, and when she didn’t, Kira nudged her with her elbow. “You can’t leave me hanging like that, Sis.”

“Do you remember, the day you met Nate, what you said that made him want to talk to you?” Mae asked softly.

Kira frowned. “Yeah, it was in philosophy class. They asked about whether living forever would be a blessing or a curse, and I said something like: ‘It’s a bit of both, isn’t it? On the one hand, you’ll have to watch everyone you love grow old and die. On the other, you get to watch the world change—you get to watch history unfold with your own eyes.’”

Mae smiled and nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway, that’s how I’ve kept going. Remembering that has kept me focused on the amazing opportunity it is, you know, to see the world change the way it has. I’ve watched it go from what we remember as children, to demolished in nuclear fire, to reborn and rebuilding again. The world keeps turning, no matter what. It makes all your problems seem quite small, too, living over 200 years.”

Kira hummed. “How come you didn’t try and go anywhere else? What kept you here?”

Her sister laughed at that. “I dunno, actually. I just always had this feeling like something was _waiting_ for me here. Every time I thought about leaving, it just seemed like it wasn’t the right time. When I met Jack and we started dating, I thought maybe I’d been waiting for him, but…” she turned to look at Kira, then, and her smile was nearly blinding. “Obviously, I was waiting for you, _Unnie_. All these years. It’s so weird to have you back, and basically the same. Care to explain that in more detail, now that I’ve caught you up?”

Kira rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “Well, _I guess so._ ” They laughed and she continued, “It’s not much of a story. The Vault-Tec guy was there barely twenty minutes before the bomb fell. We just barely got on the list and I was so disappointed we had to leave Codsworth behind—I don’t know why I remember that so damn clearly, actually. Anyway, we ran up the hill past that little brook that runs behind the neighborhood. We made it to the Vault just in time to see the bomb drop, and then we were underground. They herded us into some weird suits and had us get into these pods for ‘decontamination’. What they were really doing was freezing us into cryogenic stasis for the foreseeable future.”

Kira paused to swallow in an attempt to wet her dry mouth. “At some point, I don’t know how long ago—possibly ten years, possibly more. Anyway, some people came into the Vault and they—they took Shaun from Nate. All I could do was watch as they—they shot Nate and then they took Shaun away and I’ve been looking for him since I got out but—,” her breath hitched. “I’ve been so scared of being a mother for so long, that I’ve been procrastinating looking for him. I’m afraid to be a parent without Nate here and, to make matters worse, the trail to Shaun leads straight into the heart of the Glowing Sea and I’m still so scared of everything, Mae, and I’m so—so _sorry_.”

Kira broke off and pressed her hands to her face, biting back the sobs that rose in her throat. She’d cried enough about this—she didn’t need to cry anymore.

She felt Mae’s rough hand tug gently on her elbow like she used to when she was little and they were having one of their little sleepovers. A few tears slipped out anyway, as Mae said, “Hey. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, being scared. I’ve never been into the Glowing Sea, and I don’t blame you for being scared of it. It is terrifying. I know the idea of parenthood always scared you, too. At the very least, I don’t blame you for any of this. You’ve been thrown into the deep end and you’re just trying to keep your head above water right now. You’ll get there.”

Kira sniffed and laughed a little. “I still have nightmares, you know.”

“Hmm? Nightmares about what?”

“You. That day in Manhattan when I was 16. I _still_ haven’t outgrown those nightmares. It’s been so hard, because used to when I had those nightmares I could just call you, or when we were still kids I could go in your room and you were right there, but since I woke up? For all I knew, you were dead, and there was nothing to stop my mind conjuring up all the horrible ways you could have died that day if I hadn’t been there,” Kira explained in a rush. “I couldn’t prove myself wrong for the past half a year and it’s been so awful.”

Mae was quiet for a second, tugging Kira’s hand all the way down so that it was by her side. Slipping her fingers between hers, she said, “I still have nightmares about that, too, sometimes. They’re not really nightmares, though, because you always show up right before anything bad happens.” She paused to snort softly. “You’re always saving me—even now, 200 years in the future, when both of us really should be dead. You’re still my hero.”

Kira shook her head. “I’ll still never forget that day your English teacher stopped me at the door when I was picking you up to tell me thank you for keeping you safe because you wrote about me when you had to do that ‘My Hero Is’ project.”

Mae giggled and buried her face against Kira’s arm. “Oh god, I was _mortified_ when she did that.”

With a laugh, Kira said, “Yeah, I know. You shut yourself in your room for three hours and only came out when dinner was ready.”

“I’m glad you didn’t tease me about it.”

“What would have been the point of that? I was a hero! Heroes don’t tease the people they save,” Kira said seriously, eyes on a crack in the ceiling.

Mae hummed. “When Jack first asked me what my sister did for a living, I told him you were a Hero.”

Kira scoffed and shoved her sister lightly. “ _Mae_.”

Mae just laughed. “What? You telling me what you did with the FBI wasn’t hero work? I know you worked in homicide. You saved people _for a living_ and you’re mad I told my boyfriend that you were a full-time hero?” She poked Kira in the side. “And from what we’ve been hearing about the _Vaultie_ for the past several months, I’m gonna assume that that job carried over and that you’re still basically being a superhero for a living.”

“You’re putting me on a pedestal, Sis. I’m gonna fall.”

“You put yourself there, _Unnie_. Just admit it.”

“What _ever_ ,” Kira said with a final shove before they both dissolved into giggles. Kira couldn’t remember the last time her chest felt so light, the last time she could take a deep breath and really _feel_ it. She couldn’t remember the last time she was really, truly this happy.

When the laughter died down a bit, Mae sat up on her elbow and asked, “Hey, does your Pip-Boy play holotapes?”

Kira frowned in confusion as she reached over and pulled it off the end table. “Yeah, why?” she asked, offering it to her sister.

Mae grinned and reached into her pocket, pulling out a holotape and wiggling it. She popped it into the little cassette player and hit start.

“ _Annyeonghaseyo!”_ came two very familiar voices.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Kira cursed as her eyes immediately filled with tears. Mae laughed a little as the tape continued. 

“ _Mae, sweetie, we know you’re going away to college soon so we thought we’d sing you a song so you can play it over and over again while you’re in Boston, since you’ll just miss us_ so _much,_ ” said their mother’s voice.

“ _Yeah, but it was_ my _idea_ ,” their grandmother argued, making both of them laugh quietly.

And then they began to sing Kira and Mae’s favorite folk song from when they were kids, and the entire room blurred as Kira began to cry in earnest, barely able to hear the recording over the rushing in her ears and her hiccuping breaths. She pressed her hand to her mouth roughly to keep it down, trying to listen, but she wasn’t really succeeding. As if to make up for it, Mae began to sing along quietly.

_“Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo..._  
Arirang gogaero neomeoganda.  
Nareul beorigo gasineun nimeun  
Simnido motgaseo balbbyeongnanda.”

Kira managed to hum along a little before the song ended and their mother and grandmother began speaking again. 

“ _We love you, Mae! See you soon!_ ”

Mae settled next to Kira again, reaching up to wipe some of the tears away. “You okay? I didn’t mean to, like, do whatever that did to you.”

Kira laughed and shook her head. “I’m fine,” she assured, voice cracking. “I just didn’t realize how much I missed them. Nate’s holotape he made me didn’t even make me cry like that, holy shit.” She rubbed at her eyes furiously for another second. “Ugh, okay. Shit. I imagine that has also had a hand in keeping you going for 200 years?”

Mae shrugged. “I haven’t usually had anything to listen to it on, but yeah. You sure you’re okay?”

Kira nodded and took a few deep, calming breaths. “Yeah. I’m okay.” She sighed. “I never got to say goodbye.”

Mae was quiet for a second, before saying, “Well, to be fair, Grandma is probably still alive and kicking somewhere in Asia right now.”

Kira just laughed a little as a few more tears dripped down her temples and soaked her pillowcase a little more. She frowned a moment later and asked, “Hey, where were you keeping that when we found you?”

Mae snorted and dissolved into giggles. “Jack had it, idiot. He keeps it with him, usually, ‘cause he already has a collection of holotapes that he protects with his life.”

“ _Oh_.” Kira chuckled a little, though the sound was kind of empty. The room fell quiet for minute after that, save for Kira’s occasional hiccups. She had started to doze a little when she remembered something. “Mae, are you staying the night?” 

Mae took a deep breath and said, “I was gonna, but that’s up to you. I might be too bright for you to sleep.” She looked up and grinned to show she was joking.

Kira grinned back at her tiredly. “You light up my life,” she said through a yawn, laughing when Mae slapped her lightly on the shoulder. She wasn’t done yet, though. “I am still a little afraid of the dark.”

“ _Oh my god_ , I hate you.”

Kira just giggled and settled further into her pillows. “You love me.”

Mae sighed and got up to turn the lights off. As she laid back down next to her sister, she hummed and said, “You love me, too.”

With one last, sleepy smile, Kira agreed with Mae. “You betcha.”

Neither Mae nor Kira could remember having slept better than they did that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I’m a bleeding heart and I love these girls so much. Kira isn’t a self-insert really (lmao I’m not smart enough for the FBI), but she and Mae do share my heritage, because there aren’t enough Korean characters out there in my opinion. The song at the end is really important to me because, while I don’t actually speak any Korean, little folk songs like that were a big part of my childhood. My grandma used to sit outside with me in the summer and sing those songs to me and it was always my favorite thing to do. Listening to the melody and the words, even now, it’s something really special and I don’t know how else to explain except whenever I listen to them I can feel it in my bones and it’s just so…nostalgic and it feels like home.  
> This chapter is really close to my heart, anyway, and I hope you liked it. I’m gonna include some links to my favorite versions of Arirang to listen to when I get stressed out—maybe you’ll like them, too.
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVacAH49_c) one is an opera singer accompanied by a small orchestra.
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnL4Hq050is) one is a symphony orchestra.
> 
> Here’s the English translation of the lyrics I used. In the first link, the singer uses different lyrics but it’s still great.
> 
> Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo...  
> Crossing over Arirang Pass.  
> The one who abandoned me  
> Shall not walk even 4 kilometers before their feet hurt.
> 
> EDIT: Check out this [AWESOME FANART](http://anosrepasi.tumblr.com/post/145078715822/playing-around-with-kiras-pipboy-does-this) that [Anosrepasi](https://anosrepasi.tumblr.com) drew me of Mae and Jack omg


	17. The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・✧

It took Nick several days to work up the courage to talk to Kira. He didn’t really avoid her, but he did avoid being alone with her more than absolutely necessary. It wasn’t hard at first, because she was still giddy with the return of her sister (the first two days were filled almost completely with the two of them belting out show tunes as loudly as they could, which was about as funny as it sounded), but a few days afterwards, she came up to him late one evening and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. She’d looked so hopeful that it had honestly hurt him a little to say no—it helped even less that the only excuse he could think of was that needed to run some diagnostics immediately. She didn’t believe that, from the way her face fell even further, and he cursed himself inwardly for being such a chump. She didn’t deserve this.

Why was he so afraid of her?

He saw her go to bed much earlier, so he figured it was safe to take his leave of his hiding space and take a walk in the night air. He was planning on getting some fresh air, and clearing his head. He wasn’t planning on turning the corner towards his spot to find her sitting at the picnic table and facing away from him, with a lantern on the table, working on something by the looks of her posture. 

Nick hesitated, weighing his options. He could turn around, go back to hiding, avoid her some more. Or, he could walk over to her now and pretend to be a man a little better.

Taking a deep breath that he didn’t technically need, he decided on the latter. He couldn’t keep skirting around this forever—not if he really wanted either of them to move forward, whatever that meant.

Walking closer, he cleared his throat and hesitantly asked, “Would you mind a little company?”

She didn’t look at him, just shrugged and hummed lightly. “I guess not.”

_Well,_ he thought as he slid onto the bench next to her, _it’s a start._ He glanced at what she was working on, and it looked like plans for houses. He had forgotten, somehow, in all of this mess, that she was still the one in charge of rebuilding this quiet little neighborhood.

“Thought you went back to Diamond City,” she commented idly, writing down a few notes.

He frowned. “What made you think that?”

She snorted. “You’ve been avoiding me and I haven’t seen you all day—I just assumed you decided to head back without me.”

Nick was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he still asked, “Why?”

Kira smiled a little and turned to look at him. Shaking her head slightly, she said, “Well, I think it bothered you when I kissed you the other night, and you’ve been avoiding me ever since because you don’t know how to let me down gently. And then I haven’t seen you all day, like I said, so I just thought you were hoping to avoid me until I forgot or something.” She turned back to her work and sighed. “Anyway, if you could just go ahead and tell me what you want, that’d be great.”

She was mad at him, and he expected as much, but at least she was willing to hear him out. With a sigh, he looked up at the night sky, searching for strength to help him get through this next conversation. He didn’t exactly find anything, but he needed to know, so he took a breath to steady himself before he spoke. “I—those flashes I’ve been having—I…” _Hell_. He shook his head and tried again. “They haven’t been about Jenny. They’ve—they’ve been about _you_ , and I don’t even know if they’re real, because they all have this sort of fuzzy quality to them which makes them odd. I’ve been afraid to bring them up for a while, and—and then when you kissed me…”

Kira had turned to look at him again, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze. “Nick, what could they have possibly been about that upset you that much?”

Still avoiding her face, he said, “It—they—you and Nick Valentine seemed to have had, er, _relations_ , and, well, with my identity crisis, the idea that, well…” He trailed off, cursing himself for stumbling over his words so much, certain that if he _could_ blush, he would definitely be bright red right about now.

Kira made a sort of strange, strangled sound in the back of her throat, and he ducked his head in shame. He knew it. She’d been into the other Nick Valentine first, and he was just—

His thoughts were cut off as she tossed her head back and began to laugh. She only laughed like that for a moment, before slapping a hand over her mouth and resting her elbows on the table, trying to stay quiet and not wake anyone up. Her laughter died away after another moment, though she dissolved into another round of giggles when she glanced at the look on his face. Eventually, she managed to stop laughing enough to speak. 

“ _Nick_ , you—holy shit, Nick, we didn’t— _I_ never did _anything_ with Nick Valentine. I mean, there was a case where we had to hide from some suspects really quick and we kissed, but I never had an affair or anything like that. Nate and I were very much trying to work through our issues, and I wasn’t about to cheat with an adoption pending, you know? I don’t know what you’re remembering, but nothing like that ever happened,” she said, still smiling. 

She bumped her shoulder against his and he felt his lips twitch a little. If she was telling the truth, then that meant— “Is that the reason you’ve been acting so weird since the other night? You think I’m just into the other Nick and I’m projecting it onto you?”

His good hand came up to rub at the back of his neck self-consciously. “It might be,” he admitted softly.

Kira shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.” She extinguished the lantern as she spoke, setting it on top of her papers to keep them from blowing away, and scooted closer to him on the bench. She watched the sky for a moment before sighing, “That wasn’t all, was it?”

He sighed. “No. I still can’t quite believe it. You and me? It just doesn’t fit, you know?”

Kira grinned at him widely and said, “No. I really don’t.”

He smiled back, just a little. “ _Women_.”

Bumping her shoulder into his again, she said, “Come on, Detective. What did you mean by ‘doesn’t quite fit’?”

Oh. He fidgeted uncomfortably, unsure of how to word this delicately and not insult her. Mouth settling into another frown, he said, “You wouldn’t want to be with me, doll. I’m just a synth—you’d be better off with someone a little closer to home. Someone who could—well, who could give you what you _need_.”

“The hell do I need that you can’t provide?” she asked and he didn’t need to look at her to know she’d narrowed her eyes and tilted her head at him, the way she always did when she was confused and frustrated.

Now he was _really_ uncomfortable. Trying to avoid spelling it out to her completely, he turned to her and gestured to his face. “Look at me. I don’t even have a whole face. You don’t want this.”

Her eyebrows rose. “I think that’s up to me, don’t you?”

Of course. Of course, she wasn’t going to make this any easier for him. Why did he think she would? Sighing, he said, “I don’t—Kira, I don’t have…I don’t _have—_ ” Nope. Nope. He wasn’t going to get the words out. He couldn’t make his mouth work.

Desperation setting in, he just gave her a meaningful look, hoping she’d catch on. She stared at him for a minute, searching his face, and then he watched the realization set in, watched it bloom across her face. She shook her head. “Are you honestly trying to tell me that you’re trying to turn me down because you don’t have _the parts_?”

He flinched and averted his gaze again, embarrassed. “It’s not—it’s not _just_ that,” he began unsteadily. “I know how humans work, sweetheart. I’ve seen what—what _that_ can do to people, and I know that I couldn’t ever be enough for you. I don’t want,” he cut himself off with a huff. Why couldn’t he talk tonight? Where were his smooth words now? 

“I’m afraid you’ll get bored of me, eventually,” he settled on at last.

The silence that hung over them after that sentence was heavy, and it terrified him. He was so scared that she was going to agree with him, that she’d say something like, ‘ _Okay, you’re right. We’ll just stay friends,’_ and that will be that. There won’t be another chance for him to win her affections—it was now, or never. He fought back the urge to start bouncing his legs under the table, and was a little relieved when she just sighed. In his peripheral vision, he saw her tilt her head back, looking up at the sky.

“I’m gonna tell you a story,” she began softly, “and then we can decide what to do.”

He didn’t answer, just watched her profile as she took a deep breath and began to speak.

“I dated a few people, growing up in New York. It always felt a bit weird, though, and I wasn’t sure why. While I cared a lot about every person I dated, girlfriends and boyfriends alike, when it came to the more physical aspect of things, I always felt…off. Like we weren’t quite on the same wavelength, because I didn’t really have any interest in being _physical_ , you know. I didn’t think of them that way, either, so I didn’t really understand when they talked about celebrities who were ‘sexy’ and stuff like that. I didn’t think anything of it, though, because I figured it would go away over time. And even if it didn’t, there probably wasn’t anything I could do about it, because I wasn’t about to go to therapy, because that would just be admitting that there was a problem, you know? And I really didn’t think it was a problem at first. In fact, it wasn’t a problem at all, until I met Nate.”

“Before I continue, let me just say that Nate was a good man. I really did love him, and he was the reason I got through school at all. If I hadn’t had him by my side, I don’t know where I would have ended up. That being said, my funny feelings eventually became an issue, because when you’ve been with someone for so long, it becomes expected that you take it another step further. And sex was…well, it wasn’t _awful_ , but I didn’t really like it either. I did it for Nate, because I loved him and I liked making him happy—and I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I have a point, I promise. Anyway, after we got married, it got worse. I thought something was wrong with me, because even after so long, I still wasn’t really into it the way everyone else seemed to be. I thought I was broken. I know that wasn’t the case, now.”

“It was my sister that introduced me to the concept of asexuality, actually. I confessed to her late one night, while she was on break and Nate was out with some of his friends from the military. She gave me a really funny look when she said, ‘ _You’re not broken, Sis. Sounds to me like you’re just asexual_.’ I did research on it after that and, lo and behold, I found that it fit me perfectly. There was a good twenty minutes where I was practically drowning in the idea that, no, I _wasn’t_ broken. There was nothing wrong with me—I just had a different sexual orientation than I’d originally thought.”

“The, ah, relief I felt didn’t last long. When I came out to Nate, and explained that I would like it if maybe we stopped having sex because I didn’t really like it, he got _so_ mad.” She paused to smile a little sadly and rub at her face. “That was the worst fight we ever had. I know he wasn’t mad at _me_ , necessarily. He was more angry with himself, and horrified that I’d let him touch me when I didn’t want him to. He thought he’d essentially been assaulting me all those years, but that wasn’t the case at all. What we did was consensual, I just wasn’t interested in doing it ever again.”

Kira sighed sadly. “That was really the first fracture in our marriage that led to the others. We were trying to work it out, though, because we’d been through so much together and it would be stupid to throw all that away just because of a few arguments. I hate myself a little, though, because even as I mourned his death and missed him, there was a twinge of relief that I didn’t have to—didn’t have to keep working at a dying relationship anymore.”

She made a face and turned to look at Nick, finally. Smiling a little, she asked, “Do you understand, now? I don’t _care_ if you don’t want sex. In fact, that fact alone probably would make you the best romantic partner I’ve ever had, because you’re the first to feel the same as me about having a _physical_ relationship.”

What could he say to that? She’d just written off the last of his worries about starting something with her. He didn’t have anything else to say. He didn’t even know where to _begin_ —

“Are you going to kiss me, or just sit there staring?” she breathed with a little laugh.

His face broke into a smile so wide that he could feel the rough edges of his skin as they caught along the exposed metal of his jawline. She smiled back just as wide as he brought up his bare hand to brush against her cheek lightly. Without a second thought, he wrapped his good arm around her shoulders and brought his mouth to hers, sighing into her mouth blissfully. She kissed him back softly at first, then a little deeper, a little harder. He didn’t dare kiss her too deeply, as the skin inside his mouth wasn’t really in tact and he didn’t want to hurt her, but _god_ he wanted to. He felt her hand come up to cup the side of his face as she tilted her head some more, looking for a better angle, and he melted into her.

In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but think how perfect this all was, curled up with her on a bench, overlooking the water, kissing her under the light of million, million stars. It was practically cinematic.

She pulled away after a few minutes and he leaned after her desperately, not ready for the moment to end. Kira just giggled and let him kiss her one more time before she wrapped her arm around his back and shifted to rest her head against his shoulder. Tangling the fingers of her free hand between his bare ones, she sighed contentedly and breathed, “The sun’s rising.”

He glanced up then and, sure enough, the sky was starting to change colors, the inky bluish color of night giving way to pastel blue and orange. The few clouds in the sky caught the light in the form of pinks and purples. Nick took a deep, deep breath as he took it all in, resting his cheek against the top of her head (careful not to get her hair caught in the metal and gears that were exposed on the side of his face).

There were still so many things he wanted to say, to tell her, but they could wait. Right now, all he wanted to do was hold her and watch the sunrise. There would be plenty of time for talking later.

For now, in this rare, quiet moment, the world was at peace—and he quite liked it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, it's fINISHED. This is the first thing I've ever finished in my whole life, and I'm so proud of it. I want to thank all of you for sticking with me for this whole thing. I've made a lot of new friends because of this fic, and it's been a hell of a ride.
> 
> I'm kind of sad this is over, but!! Now it's onto the sequel, so stay tuned for that sometime in the (hopefully) near future!
> 
> I love you guys!!! <3
> 
> Edit: Forgot to mention how close to my heart Kira is, not just because she's my Sole and I know like everything about her, because she shares my sexual orientation! The whole spiel about asexuality wasn't exactly my own personal experience, but it echoes (lol) a lot of my own fears about the future and how relationships may or may not go. To all my asexual siblings, please know that I love each and every one of you so much. I wish you all the happiness in the world!! 
> 
> <333


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